


Life is More... | The 100 Prompts

by dreamsheartstory



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Ficlet Collection, Multi, One Shot Collection, Other, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:50:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 40,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9256595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsheartstory/pseuds/dreamsheartstory
Summary: Depository of all my prompts filled for The 100. See individual chapters for prompt/description.Ships so far (alphabetical):- Anya/Raven- Anya/Clarke/Lexa- Anya/Clarke/Raven- Anya/Lexa/Raven- Anya/Luna/Raven- Clarke/Lexa- Clarke/Luna/Raven- Clarke/Niylah/Octavia- Clarke/Octavia/Raven- Clarke/Raven- Lexa/Raven- Luna/Raven- Octavia/Raven





	1. Clexa | prompt: I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice

Lexa watched Clarke across the camp. Negotiations were done for the night, the camp settling into dinner and revelry. Tonight it didn’t draw her like it usually did. The Commander’s mind was on the blonde sky girl. 

All day Clarke had been watching Lexa when she thought she wasn’t looking. More than once Clarke had looked away quickly only to blush. Though honestly it was hard to tell under the layer of dirt on her face. The last couple of weeks on the ground had not been kind to the sky people. Not that the sky people had earned any kind of peace.

Clarke caught Lexa watching her but Lexa did not look away. Let the girl know what she thought. There was no shame in it. Clarke had a sharp mind and her people followed her. She gestured for Lexa to join her next to the fire.

There was a silence when Lexa sat down. Outside of negotiations and action the girls had not talked. The sky was clear and the stars shown bright. The fire lit them up, dancing and ever changing. Lexa looked to Clarke, the stony facade she wore as commander giving way to something softer and human.

“I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice,” Lexa said simply.

Clarke snorted, a bit taken by surprise. Lexa was nothing, if not to the point. 

“That is why you invited me over?”

Clarke turned red. “And how is it exactly that I look at you?”

It was Lexa’s turn to pause. She had only known Clarke a short while and the pain of Costia still bit deep. Yet the girl still held her in thrall. 

“That’s what I thought.” Clarke took a sip from the small flask she carried with her and handed it to Lexa who took a sip as well.

So much for the direct approach.


	2. Princess Mechanic | prompt: raven taking care of clarke

“Clarke, you need to lie down.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Clarke tries to push past Raven but she ends up leaning into her more than actually making it past her. “I have patients, they need me.” She weakly pushes off Raven and barely makes it two steps before a coughing fit overtakes her.

“Everyone is asleep, Clarke, and Octavia should be back soon with a cure from Lincoln.” Raven grabs the rag and bowl of water in Clarke’s hands, setting it down on a nearby table. “You won’t be any good to anyone if you can’t even stand upright.”

Clarke stands up straighter, as if to prove that she can, and sways a little. “I can’t be sick, Raven. I have to take care of them.”

“I can do that. You need rest.”

“I’ll be fine.” Clarke tries to walk past Raven again but only makes it a few steps before her knees give out. Raven reaches for her, catching Clarke before she crashes to the ground and holds onto her until she feels Clarke get her legs take her weight again.

Clarke smiles weakly at her, and Raven can’t help but smile back.

“Take me to bed, Raven.” Clarke laughs to herself but it turns into another coughing fit.

Raven rubs her back. “That’s just the fever talking,” she jokes.

“’s’not.” Clarke mumbles against Raven’s shoulder; Raven blushes.

“Ask me again when your brain isn’t being cooked by a grounder virus.”

Wrapping an arm around Clarke’s waist she takes a step toward the empty cots at the back of the drop ship. Clarke’s feet aren’t moving but she’s still leaning heavily against Raven’s shoulder causing her to lean at a dangerous angle. The fight has gone out of her. If everyone weren’t so sick it would be comical, but they need Clarke. Raven catches Clarke up into her arms and Clarke curls around her, burying her face in Raven’s neck.

She almost doesn’t hear Clarke’s reply as it’s a whisper muffled against her skin, “If you want.”


	3. Clexa | prompt: an unhappy fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set right before Lexa’s fight with Roan.

Clarke has been in Polis for three days and Lexa hasn’t taken an easy breath since her captors threw Clarke at Lexa’s feet, Clarke screaming and half crazy, not even recognizing Lexa at first. Lexa had slowly, carefully, undone Clarke’s bonds, removed her gag, watching as a dull, hardened, realization washed over Clarke. She had followed Lexa in silence to her private room beside the throne room and in an instant Clarke had been on her, trembling with anger, dagger poised at Lexa’s throat.

Three days had done much to change their relationship, they had an understanding of sorts now, but there is a gulf between them and perhaps there always will be.

Lexa takes a hesitating step toward Clarke, her constantly steady hands, shaking. She has precious few minutes until she needs to leave to prepare for the trial and she should be meditating on the fight, clearing her mind, but every time she closes her eyes she sees Clarke’s face angry but uncertain, feels the dagger pressed to her neck. Lexa’s breath tries to come in short, sharp, bursts but she forces it into long beats. Only Clarke makes her feel as if her own fate matters, as if she is more than a vessel for the spirit of the _heda_. Then again, only Clarke has given her reason to feel this deeply in the years since she gave up herself.

No one since, Costia has had this power. She could never afford this distraction, to let herself love someone is to put them in constant danger. Costia paid for being loved by Lexa with her life; Clarke has suffered a worse fate.

Lexa takes a shuddering breath as she stops her slow progression across the tent, close enough to reach out to Clarke, but she doesn’t. What she has to say demands time, but that is the one thing she doesn’t have. If the fates will it she may not survive the fight, and for the first time she is worried about her own death and what it means. She makes herself meet Clarke’s eyes, blue and fierce, yet softened by something Lexa doesn’t dare hope on.

“After Costia’s death I wrote off the possibility of loving again.” Lexa hesitates as Clarke’s expression doesn’t change. “Then _you_ fell from the sky and at every turn you have challenged me.” She breathes out, her voice dropping, barely audible, “And you made me stronger for that.”

Her gaze falls for a moment and she feels Clarke shift. When Lexa looks up again the sharpness is gone from Clarke’s gaze, tears not yet fallen making her blue eyes into bottomless lakes. Lexa sucks in a breath. “I told you love is weakness, Clarke, but I’ve never been weaker than in the three moons since you left.”

Lexa swallows hard; she’s said what she had to say. Whatever her fate, she has done everything she can, for her people and for herself. Lexa watches as Clarke’s jaw wavers, almost as if she might speak. Instead she meets Lexa’s eyes, holding her gaze. The distance between them narrows down and stretches out, even though though they are close enough to touch, in that moment, there is nothing that could span the gulf between them, and any contact would shatter them.

A trumpet sounds; it’s time. Lexa nods quickly to Clarke and spins on her heel to leave. She’s at the flap of the tent before Clarke finds her voice.

“With or without me, Lexa, you are not weak.” Clarke pauses and Lexa nearly turns, but she can already see her guards approaching to lead her to the square. She straightens her back, but turns her head to the side to better hear Clarke’s soft voice, _“Ste yuj, Leksa. Hodnes nou laik kwelnes.”_  
  
There are worse fates than death.


	4. Octaven | prompt: when it rains/snows/pours

Octavia always seems to get caught in the rain. She’s running late for the bus, in fact, she’s nearly certain she’s missed the bus, which means turning around and high tailing it in the other direction to get to school on time, which won’t happen, especially in the rain. Either way she’ll be soaked.

She sighs heavily like only a world weary nine year old can.

If she had a phone like all the other kids at school she could text Clarke and tell Clarke to tell her mom, who happened to be their teacher, that she was gonna be late… again… and maybe please could she borrow some dry clothes. Mrs. Griffin always had an extra pair of clothes for Clarke stashed in her car because Clarke was always covered head to toe in paint.

“Yo! Lil’ Blake.”

Octavia’s shoulders slump and she closes her eyes. Raven Reyes. The really cool, really smart fifth grader in their class. Octavia wishes everyone didn’t know her brother, he’d already moved up to the upper school, but to everyone she was still the littler Blake. She wishes Raven saw her as something other than Bellamy’s undersized little sister.

“You miss the bus?” Raven skids to a stop on her bike next to Octavia.

“Yup.” She hefts her bag higher on her shoulders and keeps walking. Her cheeks are burning despite the cold rain.

“Swap me coats and get on.” Raven grabs at the damp sleeve of her jean jacket.

Octavia spins and nearly trips over her own feet. Even though she’s still the littlest one in the fourth grade she feels like she’s all limbs and no coordination some days.

“What?”

“The spray from the tire will give you a skunk track in this rain.” Raven starts shucking off her green vinyl raincoat. “Come on, hurry up, or we’ll both be late, and even wetter than we are.” Raven makes a face. “And I don’t want to have to explain to Mrs. Griffin why I’m late, and I’m sure you don’t want to explain why _you_  missed the bus, _again_.”

Octavia nods rapidly and peels off her jacket, still two sizes too big because it’s an old hand me down from Bellamy. She slips Raven’s jacket on over her backpack and climbs onto the bike behind Raven, trying not to let the awe that she feels trip her up and knock them both over.

Raven stands up and starts peddling like they’re fleeing the recess duties for breaking the rules in four square. Octavia laughs and holds onto Raven for balance. They make it to the school before the bus, sputtering rain and making a mad dash for the covered walkway.

Octavia slips off Raven’s coat and hands it back. Raven peels of Octavia’s now thoroughly soaked jacket but holds onto it. “We’ll put this on the radiator before class, maybe it’ll be dry by recess.”

“Thanks.” The corner of Octavia’s mouth quirks up in a smile.

“You should see if you can borrow your brother’s slicker next time and his bike, since he’s too cool to ride to school anymore and you live so close.”

Octavia shrugs, and wraps her arms around herself, shivering. “I dunno if my mom would let me.”

“You’d ride with me, before and after school.” Raven shrugs like that’s all it would take and starts walking toward their class. “Besides, if we rode together you could hang with me and Lexa and Clarke - well, when Mrs. Griffin is on time anyway - before class every day.”

“Yeah?” Octavia runs the few steps and catches up with Raven. She feels a bit giddy and warm, if a lot damp.

“Yeah.” Raven crashes into Octavia as they turn into the classroom with a giggle. “You can hang out with us, Octavia. You’re cool.”

Octavia’s fairly certain she’s never been happier to be soaking wet from the rain on a Monday morning. She never expected something good to happen when it rained.


	5. Anya/Clarke/Lexa | anya didn't die!au pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: under the cover of darkness

Lexa leans across the war table, the point of her dagger digging into the edge of the map. She uses it to pull herself further, practically on her tip toes as she’s tries to get in Anya’s face. The plan is dangerous, but they need to find a way to get a team close enough to the _Maunon’s_ defenses so that they can rescue their people, all of their people. Lexa’s eyes flick to Clarke who’s hovering at the end of the table halfway between Lexa and Anya.

She’s been halfway between them in more ways than one since she walked into Lexa’s tent with Anya on her heels.

Lexa feels the leather give way under her dagger as it bites into the table. “We go under the cover of darkness.”

“I’m telling you it doesn’t matter, they have ways to see us.” Anya growls and leans forward. She and Lexa are nearly nose to nose.

Clarke drums her fingers on the table, “Anya’s right, they have night vision camera’s.”

Lexa and Anya whip their heads to stare down Clarke.

“And I’m _heda._ We will follow _my_ plan.”

“As my second you are here to learn, _quietly_.”

“I thought I was here as the representative from _skaikru_.” Clarke fixes them with a steely gaze of her own.

Lexa purses her lips and sheaths her dagger a little more forcefully than necessary as she steps back from the table. “It’s late and there’s nothing more we can do tonight. The clans will not arrive until sunrise.”

“This is true,” Anya says carefully as she rounds the table to stand next to Lexa.

“Then we have time to figure out our plan.” Clarke leans back over the map expecting the other two to come back. “There’s got to be something we’re overlooking.”

“We’re still waiting on reports from the scouts,” Lexa says softly.

“So what do you expect us to do until then?” Clarke grips the edge of the table to keep her hands from trembling. 

“What we do every night. Sleep.” Lexa smiles softly at Clarke. “Under the cover of darkness we rest, together for warmth, winter is upon us.”

“And besides, _skai girl_ , when you sleep alone you cry.” Anya reaches out for Clarke and shoves her toward the bed before Clarke can protest.

Clarke walks backward toward the bed until it hits her in the back of her knees and she sprawls against the furs. She wants to know what tomorrow will bring, if she’ll see her friends and her mother again.

“Disrobe, Clarke,” Lexa’s voice is quiet and soft like it is when it’s just the three of them, alone, without their duties between them. “Unless you desire to sleep on top of the furs.”

Clarke unzips her jacket and shivers as she drops it by the side of the bed, watching as Lexa and Anya make quick work of their own clothes. Under the cover of darkness they’re just three young women, huddled for warmth, holding each other tight, because in the light they can’t acknowledge that their hearts have become entangled for fear that it will be used against them, or fear that they will betray their people.

Their people always come first, but under the cover of darkness they can pretend.


	6. Anya/Clarke/Lexa | anya didn't die!au pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: on the edge of conciousness

Anya stirs and settles down further into the furs. Her head slips off the pillow, her face pressed between the bed and Clarke’s back. She wraps her arm tighter around Clarke’s middle, her fingertips brushing across Lexa’s wrist. The air she breathes in is warm and humid from their bodies under the furs and her nose is cold. It stings as it warms. She presses it to Clarke’s skin and smiles as Clarke whines in her sleep.

She hooks her leg between the tangle of legs that belong to Clarke and Lexa, digging her heel into the bed and pulling herself more firmly into the bed, nudging Clarke closer to Lexa so they’re all securely underneath the blankets again.

Winter is nearly upon them and the night air is freezing.

As much as Anya could endure the cold, given the opportunity for more warmth than she needs is preferable. Her mind, hazy with sleep, is content here with the women in her bed. Come morning there will be training and hard decisions but these are the moments that make the harshness possible. Things she would be loathe to admit in the light of day.

She’s harsh and tough because the world made her that way but the world is asleep when the sky is dark and so she can be herself.

Fingertips trail softly along her arm, back and forth across the ragged clump of scar tissue on her arm from where she ripped out the tracker with her teeth months ago.

Anya balls the pillow up under her head so she can see over Clarke’s shoulder. She could have let unconsciousness pull her back under, but she knows Lexa too well. Knows that touch wasn’t Clarke. 

Clarke’s hands are less tentative, and she sleeps like the dead, or like a child in a peaceful village having never learned to fear the night and feeling safe nestled between the women she loves.

Still, sleep clings to Anya and she isn’t quite awake as she meets Lexa’s half open eyes in the dark. Too many nights they’ve lain in silence watching the other as they sleep, or don’t sleep, can’t sleep. In the morning they will risk everything for their people. And while Lexa is calm, the previous commanders helping her debate the choices, giving her peace of mind that every alternative has been considered, in the dark of night, when Lexa disconnects for their consciousness and her head is empty save herself, she feels human and she worries.

Anya knows more than she should.

They shift in the bed again. Clarke patting them and snuggling as they press tighter together, still not quite awake. The three of them not quite conscious. In the dark, in the night, the three of them alone, they’re just three girls hiding away from the world.

Lexa reaches out, cupping Anya’s cheek and that’s all Anya needs to know that Lexa knows what she’s thinking. This pre-dawn light is dragging them across the edge of consciousness and closer to the harsh reality of day where the light shines and the world sees them and they must be more than three girls clinging together for warmth and love in a small bed, deep in the woods, praying to gods that long ago forgot them that the sun will bring their scouts and news that they can use to take down an enemy that feeds on hate and fear and only grows stronger when they attack.


	7. Clarke/Octavia/Raven | prompt: waiting impatiently for something

Raven taps the corner of her glass against the table, it’s not quite empty but if this silence stretches on any further it would be. She looks up but not at the others at the table, Clarke and Octavia are equally fixated on their drinks, instead Raven tips her head back and downs her drink and catches the attention of the bartender signalling for another round.

They were definitely going to need another round if one of them was going to find the courage to speak even though they were definitely on the same page.

Around them the noise of the bar where they’re getting dinner encroaches on their table, weaving between them as the next round of drinks arrives.

The three of them have been circling around this for a long time, and this cross country road trip wasn’t helping them avoid it. Really they were just waiting for someone else to bring it, up. Impatiently waiting. Probing questions. Talking about exes, talking about their ideal partner, talking about if they’ve ever fallen for a friend before and what they did about.

Raven had finally cracked and dared everyone to write down their crushes on a slip of paper. Boldly she tore a page from her notebook into six pieces. Two for each of them. Clarke had slapped down three identical pens on the table. Octavia had mixed their answers up.

_It’s not like it matters._ Octavia had dared.

_Like we don’t know everyone’s handwriting._ Clarke had argued.

_What are we doing if what we think is on those pieces of paper is on those pieces of paper?_  Raven had been the last one to speak.

Clarke taps one of the pens against the table and reads the dessert menu for the tenth time.

Raven practically takes the pint glass out of the waitresses hand when she arrives. Something has to break the tension, but she doesn’t want to be the one to do it. And she can tell from the way that Clarke and Octavia are avoiding the reality in front of them that they’re waiting for someone else to break.

Maybe she should have just gone for it and kissed Clarke at the bar three nights ago, and then Octavia later that night when they’d crawled into bed. Or maybe Clarke should have gone for it when she ran into Octavia in a towel and Octavia had nearly lost the towel.

Octavia takes the pint glass from Raven’s hands before she can take a sip.

“Pick two and turn them over.”

Raven fixes her with a stare and breathes out. She wants this, and she knows they want it, but they’re all impatiently waiting, too stubborn to do it themselves.

She flips over to pieces of paper. The handwriting is different on each.

Raven. Clarke.

“Now you,” Raven slides the remaining four pieces toward Clarke and takes her pint glass from the row of drinks Octavia created.

Again the handwriting is different on each.

Octavia. Clarke.

Clarke shakes her head and takes her drink back from the line up. She takes a sip and slides the last two scraps of paper toward Octavia. “Your turn, O.”

Raven. Octavia.

Mismatched handwriting. Each of them wrote the other two.

Octavia grabs her drink and downs half of it. “What do we do now?” she echoes Raven’s words from earlier.

“I think the normal protocol when you find out you and your best friend are mutually into each other is to continue on as normal but with kissing and sex, you know if you’re both into that.” Clarke drops the pen she’s fiddling with.

“And as far as I understand things we’re all kind of on the same page when it comes to sex.” Raven winks as she takes another sip of her drink.

“Maybe we’ll be able to save a few bucks getting a room with a single bed,” Octavia shrugs, but she’s grinning. 

“So, girlfriends then? In the completely non-platonic sense?” Raven reaches out her hands across the table and waits. This time though she doesn’t have to wait long before she feels Clarke’s hand, slightly cooler than her own, and Octavia’s hand, slightly warmer, slide into hers. Though now, she realized, she’ll be impatiently waiting for the first kiss, both of them.


	8. Anya/Lexa/Raven | prompt: fistfight

Lexa shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling as she opens up the freezer to retrieve ice. This is what she gets for dating not one, but two opinionated and slightly impulsive women. One moreso than the other, but both equally willing to back the other up. This is also what happens when she’s got to stay in and study all night and they go out, and there’s an idiot at the bar.

There’s always an idiot at the bar.

Usually it doesn’t go much further than a few words.

With a heavy sigh she sets about crushing the ice and mixing it with rubbing alcohol inside of some reusable ice packs so they can refreeze them later and actually have them be useable instead of blocks of ice.

She whirls around and marches back over to the couch where her girlfriends are sitting looking more than a little abashed. 

“A fistfight? Seriously?” Lexa huffs and drops to her knees in front of Raven. She hands one of the ice packs to Anya and purses her lips disapprovingly. Anya meets her gaze, but she’s just the wrong side of tipsy to hold it. “That’s right,” she mutters. “You,” she points to Anya as she starts digging through the first aid kit, “Encouraged this,” she gestures at Raven.

Anya presses the ice pack to her jaw and winces as the cold hits her split lip.

“Encouraged might be-”

“No.” Lexa holds up a finger. “Unless you actively told your girlfriend to stop and be quiet and back down and physically tried to stop this madness - for which you are both lucky you didn’t get arrested - you encouraged it.”

Anya swallows thickly and looks down knowing better than to apologize right away.

“And you,” Lexa dabs at the abrasion on Raven’s forehead with gauze and sterile water, “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Raven winces almost more from Lexa cursing than the pull of the gauze against the wound.

“That he was saying some really awful shit, and that he swung first.”

Lexa frowns but she’s trying not to smile. She dries the wound and bandages it and hands Raven the ice pack. Sitting up on her knees she kisses Raven softly and then turns to Anya to do the same, careful to avoid bumping the split in her lip.

“Just be careful you two, I happen to love you.” Cleaning up the small mess of first aid supplies she stands up. “So go get water and cleaned up and get to bed, both of you.”

Lexa’s halfway to the kitchen before Anya responds.

“Are you coming?” There’s a hint of an apology starting in her tone.

Lexa turns and leans against the wall separating the kitchen from the living room, “Not yet, I have to finish the studying that got interrupted.”

Raven tugs Anya to her feet, “Don’t take too long.”

Lexa shakes her head, but she’s smiling again by the time she turns around.


	9. Princess Mechanic | temporarily deaf!au pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: broken glass

The glass crunched underneath Raven’s boot digging into the concrete, edges breaking and crumbling. Her ears are still ringing with the explosion.

“Won’t survive me,” she says.

She isn’t sure if she’s said it out loud, or if she did if it was a whisper, or if her lips merely moved in the spaces required to sound out those words, her throat contracting around the vowels. Her ears don’t register the sound.

She kicks at the broken glass, there’s no one around to hear her anyway, so it doesn’t matter if she can hear herself speak. Maybe it’s not that her ears are ringing so much as she’s stopped being able to hear.

For half a second she contemplates clapping next to her ears to see if she can hear anything but she shrugs off the idea. Raven’s the only one left on this side of Polis anyway. Or she should be if her bomb did what it was supposed to. Of course it had gone off sooner than she’d planned, the detonator fuse was old and dryer than she had counted on, burning quicker than she’d wanted.

Raven glances up at the sun, she’s got a few hours left of daylight and maybe a two hour hike across Polis to the rendez-vous point since she has to avoid the tower. They haven’t been able to take it back since Lexa…

She shakes her head as if that’ll shake the memory of the dead out and kicks at another piece of glass in the rubble. Time to start walking. See who’s left come nightfall. Only a handful of skaikru remained, and even fewer arkers, but other clans had joined up against the azgeda. Not that she cares for most of them, she misses her friends and the days when they had hope.

A hand grasps her forearm and her heart pounds. She spins, dagger in her hand without having really thought about drawing it and she has it pressed up against a dirty throat framed by a dingy loose blonde curl. There’s only one person on the ground with hair that blonde.

Clarke.


	10. Princess Mechanic | temporarily deaf!au pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: broken glass

Raven can feel the blood pounding in her ears, and her leg is throbbing, it’s like not being able to hear has made the feeling that much more. 

Clarke holds still, only her eyes moving, tracing over Raven’s face.

Raven drops her arms to her side. “Sorry.” She says, or mouths. She still can’t tell if she’s making noise despite the fact that she can feel the vibration of the sound in her throat. For the first time the fact that she can’t hear makes her heart flutter and beat and she wonders if this is another thing she’ll have to live with. She sheathes her dagger and tries to offer up a smile to Clarke.

Clarke says something but Raven has no idea what it is. She points to her own ears and then mimics an explosion, talking and nada. She watches as Clarke takes a deep breath and nods.

She brings her hands up to cup Raven’s face, her touch is gentle. It’s always been gentle with Raven, ever since the start. Her thumbs brush across Raven’s cheeks and she checks her eyes. 

Gesturing to her eyes and then Raven’s ears Clarke waits until Raven nods before she turns her head ever so slightly. She steps close, her chest brushing against Raven’s arm - Raven almost wraps her arm around her waist to bring her closer so she can see what she needs to see without a light. So Raven can feel warmth and a heartbeat.

But it’s been a long time since either of them were afforded such comforts. She stays still and tries to accept the simple press of Clarke’s front against her arm.

Clarke shifts and turns Raven’s head, checking her other ear before taking a step back.

Clarke taps her ears then mimics slicing her wrists and then crosses her hands and moves them apart. Nothing.

But slicing wrists? Raven looks at Clarke in confusion for a second.

Clarke grabs her wrist. It sends a shock through Raven. She turns Raven’s wrist over and pushes up her sleeve exposing the jagged scar from where ALIE had tried to kill Raven.

Raven looks away, she hates to look at the scars. Clarke grabs her chin and directs her gaze back before running her finger along the scar, just barely brushing her skin and mimicking something spurting out.

Blood.

There’s no blood in her ears.

Raven shifts from foot to foot and grins because she gets it. Broken glass crunches underfoot. She points to her ears and shrugs, trying indicate that she wants to know when her hearing will come back.

Clarke chews on her lip and mimics a sign that might be sunrise or passing time.

Raven’s shoulders slump and she nods. Wait and see. Story of her fucking life since her feet hit dirt for the first time.

Clarke reaches out for her hand and intwines their fingers. With her free hand she taps her chest just above her heart with two fingers and then Raven’s in the same place before mimicking an explosion.

Raven squeezes Clarke’s hand. She doesn’t quite get it, but she does. That maybe Clarke was scared when she heard the bomb go off early, not that anything explains why Clarke was so nearby. But gesture won’t get them through this explanation. She needs dirt and a stick, or a computer console.

When Clarke starts walking, Raven follows, not letting go of her hand and Clarke makes no move to free herself. Raven trusts Clarke to be their ears, so she keeps an eye out in the shadows. They’ve got a long walk ahead of them and no telling how many enemies there are between them and safety. 


	11. Princess Mechanic | temporarily deaf!au pt 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: laughter

It’s been half a day since Raven lost her hearing and Clarke hasn’t left her side, they haven’t slept, and they’re only now down debriefing the leaders and receiving reports, not that Raven has understood even half of what has gone down. The battle does seem to be over though, both sides retreating to lick their wounds, regroup, and plan the next attack.

Raven’s slumped down in her chair and ducked her head, engrossing herself in picking at her nails instead of watching people talk. Kane and Sinclair and Abby and Clarke are arguing about something, the leaders from the clans that sided with the skaikru and arkers have been gone twenty minutes at least, deciding that daybreak was the end of the war council meeting. Also the last of the scouts had returned. She thinks can just about hear sound when one of them screams, it’s like a far off muffled noise.

She can’t tell if she can hear the inside of her head, or if she’s only imagining it. The rush of blood in her ears is like the ocean, vast and empty and echoing. Or maybe it’s just the nerves misfiring. Abby had only shrugged and looked at her sadly when Raven asked if her hearing would come back. Time. Time would tell. Just wait it out and see what damage has been done.

Clarke kneels down into her field of vision, smiling up at Raven. Everyone else that day had just touched her to get her attention, half the time scaring her. She’d drawn her dagger on Bellamy more than once, and Monty, and even Gina. Raven smiles back thankful Clarke didn’t just grab her shoulder though she would have known it was Clarke. Clarke has been close enough that Raven can feel the vibrations from her speaking, can tell the difference between her regular voice and a yell.

The room around them is empty.

Raven grimaces as she gets to her feet and gestures to Clarke, _time to sleep?_

Clarke shakes her head. Dipping the corner of her shirt into an abandoned water cup she scrubs at the back of her hand removing a layer of dirt. She does the same to Raven’s hand. They’re both filthy. Raven nods, it’s time to clean, not that she’s looking forward to a cold bucket of murky water. 

They walk in silence, shoulders bumping, not trying to talk with gestures. When Raven starts to move toward where the bathing area is set up Clarke takes her hand and shakes her head. She kneels down in the dirt and scrapes out the words with her dagger:

_hot springs 1 mile_

Raven’s eyes go wide. No way. Not just clean, but hot water. The smile on her face is so big it aches. Clarke nods and grins as she stands back up. They stand there grinning at each other and Raven feels like there should be more but the nuances of the things she wants to say are lost in the gestures so she mimes walking. _let’s go_.

They’re on the edge of the camp when a grounder named Koa brings them a horse. Clarke helps Raven up and then mounts behind her. It’s only a mile but Raven’s relieved she won’t have to walk it. She lets herself relax into Clarke as they ride thankful she can still feel her heartbeat and the rise and fall of her chest with each breath. It’s a comfort when she can’t hear to know that Clarke is there, this close, choosing to be like this.

She doesn’t know if it means anything more than that they are friends and leaders for their people, that Clarke needs Raven, needs Raven alive and mentally intact. It’s possibly nothing more than that. She almost sits up and puts space between them again, but Clarke’s free arm wraps around Raven’s waist and she starts questioning her logic all over again.

Clarke _is_  taking her to the hot springs to bathe, there are fresh clothes and towels and they have soap from the grounders that smells like flowers, all gifts for _wanheda_  and _boomheda,_ like they’re somehow important. Sometimes it feels like they’re just still kids.

Her heart flutters because Clarke’s thumb is brushing idly against her stomach and she swears she feels Clarke smile. It’s only fifteen minutes of them in silence, pressed together and then they’re there. 

Guards are posted and there’s steam in the air. Clarke hops down and catches Raven as she falls more than dismounts.

Raven tries to signal that Clarke can go down first, for privacy, they can bathe separately. Clarke only rolls her eyes and grabs the pack in one hand and Raven’s hand in the other and starts walking toward hot water.

Right. _Together._  That’s what Clarke had scratched in a patch of dirt in the waning light the night before before pointing emphatically between the two of them. They’re staying together until Raven can hear again.

Their clothes peel off, stiff with dirt and sweat, worn through but somehow still held together by simply being unwashed. Raven stays half a step behind Clarke, following her lead. Just how many layers are they removing? There’s been something growing between them slowly over the past few months that they’ve both been ignoring because they’re at war and they’ve lost the people that used to hold their hearts.

Clarke, in only her underwear, turns and gestures to Raven’s brace. Does she need help? Raven shakes her head and sits on the edge of the pool. She unbuckles the brace and dunks it into the water. It needs cleaning as much as she does. Clarke slips into the water and Raven realizes she’s naked. She snaps her eyes shut and inhales sharply.

Clarke tugs the brace gently out of her hands and then she feels a light touch on her knees.

Raven opens her eyes and fights the urge to look up and away because unless she looks at Clarke she can’t communicate. Clarke bites her lip and she’s trying not to smile, more like she’s holding back a shit eating grin, because there’s also mirth in her eyes. Raven realizes her inhale must have been audible and she wonders if she said anything out loud without realizing it.

Clarke reaches out and hooks her finger under Raven’s bra strap and raises an eyebrow in question. Raven nods and sets to taking off the rest of her clothes before slipping into the pool.

She grabs a cloth and scrubs the soap on it before floating out to the center where she can submerge. 

Raven dunks her head, the water wrapping around her, it’s hot, so much hotter than any water she’s felt in months, maybe since the ark. It’s like heaven. She comes to the surface and spits water. It’s delightful. Even just this, floating in the heat, her heart speeds up, and she’s giddy with reasons that have nothing to do with her nervousness from moments ago.

She scrubs at her face and watches the cloth darken with dirt. She rinses it off and starts again. Actually getting clean.

Clarke catches her attention, not for trying, but just because she’s watching Raven. Her eyes are light, blue shimmering pools filled with happiness for the first time since the day Raven met her. There’s a smirk on her lips and Raven realizes she can hear Raven’s delight at being clean.

Raven splashes water at Clarke and it hits her in the face. Clarke fires back. Before long they’re both laughing. Raven can feel her own laughter vibrate her core, clench her stomach muscles, crinkle her eyes. She watches Clarke laugh and it’s like watching the sunrise, a shooting star, a blooming flower, it’s like watching the bioluminescent forest come a live at night. 

It’s the most beautiful sight she’s ever seen.

She remembers the timbre of that laughter, tinkling bells, joyful and everything they’re fighting for.

One day she’s going to hear that sound again.


	12. Anya/Clarke/Raven | college roommates!au pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: when words aren't enough

Last night Clarke had fallen asleep during the bi-weekly movie night with her head on Anya’s shoulder. She had half-woken up halfway through with Anya’s head heavy against hers, and her hand tangled in Raven’s hair. Raven who had her head in Anya’s lap. Half-asleep she felt warmth flood through her, like this was something she wanted, something she needed.

That hadn’t been the first time they had fallen asleep together, but they’d never been quite so entangled, and if they had it wasn’t like this. This felt different.

Three years of friendship that started the day they moved into the freshman dorm and wasn’t going anywhere but it was building into something that would last their lifetimes. Clarke really hadn’t thought of it as something more until right then when she realized she wanted this always.

She had looked up to see Octavia watching them, everyone else still engrossed in the movie, but Octavia was giving them a look, a raised eyebrow and wide eyes, not full of judgement but curiosity. Clarke had shrugged and pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and closed her eyes again. It had a been a long week and she just wanted to enjoy this because it felt good.

After the movie had ended they had disentangled themselves and said goodnight to everyone and stumbled toward their beds, alone.

That next morning though Raven was more physical than normal, leaning against Clarke while they waited for coffee, sitting on Anya’s lap while they waited for breakfast. It felt right. 

So when Raven comes and rests her chin on Clarke’s shoulder while she’s washing dishes she turns off the water, drives her hands, and turns around to hold her. No questions, no words, just something they don’t have the words for yet.

It feels natural, cuddling like this, like they’re crossing into something that transcends words. Raven, sleepy with her nose pressed against Clarke’s neck is a warm comfort.

“When did we start cuddling in the kitchen?” Anya asks as she leans against the counter and pours herself another cup of coffee.

“When did we start cuddling on movie night?” Raven quips, it’s half a challenge. “Someone wasn’t satisfied with just one cuddly roommate.”

Anya’s ears rouge and she drops her gaze but her shoulders stay square.

Clarke, still wrapped around Raven, starts walking toward the living room and grabs Anya’s hand to pull her along. They’ve been friends for too long, and there has never been this between any of them, the needing lingering touches and hints that maybe they wanted more. Sure they’ve comforted each other before, but this is a  line that they haven’t stepped across before.

It feels like they’ve smashed their way across it accidentally, coming together and stumbling into unfamiliar territory.

It’s an electric current between them when they touch. All the things they’ve not yet been able to say. clarke doesn’t want to talk about it, the three of them have too much stubbornness and too much sass to have the conversation she wants to have. They’ll avoid it forever, because what she has on her mind isn’t something any of them have ever considered out loud.

Clarke doesn’t want to stop touching either of her friends and she’s certain the feeling is mutual. Anya hasn’t pulled her hand away yet and that is quite possibly the most telling sign that Clarke is right.

Clarke is always right.

She nudges Raven back into the couch and takes Anya’s coffee from her before doing the same. Taking a deep breath Clarke nods her head, mostly to herself, psyching herself up for what she’s about to do. It’s reckless and possibly stupid but there had been a moment last night. Everyone had left and they’d stood near the front door, close enough to feel each other’s breath. Anya and trailed fingertips down their forearms. Raven had taken half a step closer, shifting weight between her good and injured legs. Then Clarke had sneezed and the spell had broken and they’d mumbled sleepy goodnights.

Clarke nudges Anya’s legs apart with one knee, and does the same to Raven with the other before coming to sit half in each of their laps.

“Clarke, what are–” Anya is shushed by Clarke’s finger pressed to her lips. 

When she’s certain Anya won’t speak again she opens her palm against her cheek, cradling it, thumb brushing over the soft skin. She smiles and meets Anya’s questioning gaze with as much courage as she can muster before she turns to Raven.

Her heart is pounding in her ears and she can barely hear her own thoughts. She reaches out and pulls Raven toward her, hand wrapped around the back of her neck, and kisses her softly. It isn’t deep or profound, barely more than chaste. Before Raven can respond Clarke turns her head and pulls Anya toward her kissing her with the same gentleness.

She sits back, taking in the stunned look on both their faces.

This is when she expects the talking to start, but for once both girls are at a loss for words. Instead she watches as Anya turns to Raven and kisses her with intent. Clarke can’t help but think that they’ve said more in the last few minutes than they did in all their years of talking.

Clarke lets herself fall onto the couch, and tugs Raven with her, then reaches for Anya until they’re tangled together. Raven curled against Clarke’s side, Anya laying against her chest.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Raven asks quietly.

Anya shushes her, “Not yet,” she whispers. “Let’s figure out how we feel first.”

Clarke snuggles down into the couch further and smiles knowing that as the other two settle down against her and each other they’ve already said almost everything they need to. This is something they _all_  want.


	13. Anya/Clarke/Raven | college roommates!au pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: under the cover of darkness

Three weeks since Clarke took a chance and kissed her roommates and neither Raven, nor Anya, nor Clarke have found the words to articulate what is passing between them. Instead they sit closer to each other, legs pressed together or tangled on the couch. They curl up together, heads on shoulders, arms around waists. They kiss, sometimes in pairs, sometimes, in a slow, delicate way the three of them. The promise of more is always there. More, one day, if only they could find the words they needed. Touch saying all the things that they can’t out loud, knowing all the while they need to find some kind of clarity.

Each of them knows better than to dive in deep before they can articulate what they want. They’ve been hurt before, held each other through heartbreak, they don’t want to break over this.

Clarke presses her hand flat against Raven’s chest and presses her back gently as the kiss breaks. She doesn’t want to stop but Raven’s thigh is pressed high between hers and their hands are skirting dangerously close to the edge of no return.

“We gotta stop, babe,” Clarke closes her eyes, there’s a slight whine in her voice.

“I know,” Raven pants. She presses her forehead against Clarke’s collarbone. “I know. We’re waiting until we’re all ready to talk about this, about the three of us.” She groans and sits up on the couch, putting space between her and Clarke.

They need the space.

“I think I need a cold shower.” Clarke rolls off the couch and sits up on the floor leaning back against it.

“Me too,” Raven says as she throws herself back against the couch.

Clarke holds up a finger and points at Raven without looking back at her, “No, you stay, I called it first.”

Anya clears her throat behind them, having just emerged from her room to get a glass of water, “You know, we could get to the fun part if we stopped getting wrapped up in trying to get to the fun part.”

Raven snorts, “You can’t even say it.”

“I’m gonna go back to studying,” Anya snaps.

“And I’m going to shower,” Clarke gets to her feet and heads to the bathroom.

~~~~~~~~~

Raven can’t sleep. It’s somewhere past midnight and she hasn’t been able to stop her mind from racing, turning over what seems to building between her and Clarke and Anya. Her best friends, not counting Octavia. They’ve been her home for the last three years, and now, there’s more between them, but they’re all afraid to say anything about it. Afraid to admit that they might actually be falling for each other, all three of them.

She doesn’t want to fumble with her brace in the dark, so she reaches for her phone and sends out two texts telling Clarke and Anya to come to her room. Her mind seems clearer about the three of them laying her in the dark and maybe she can push out the truth in the cover of darkness.

Maybe if it goes terribly they can all pretend it didn’t happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Anya nearly runs  straight into Clarke in the dark hallway outside Raven’s room. Her hands run over the shorter girl, realizing it’s her, holding on so she doesn’t fall over, half asleep as she is. Half her back and shoulder are still numb from falling asleep at her desk, she’s almost thankful for the text that woke her. But now Clarke is winding her arms around Anya, her nose is sleep warm and pressed to the crook of her neck, and she almost forgets that Raven had texted her to come to her room.

“Why are you up?” Anya murmurs into Clarke’s hair.

“Raven,” she answers sleepily. “You?”

“Same.”

“You think…?” Clarke can’t quite find the words.

“Continuation of earlier?” Anya ventures as they step back from each other. She leans against the wall across the hallway from Raven’s door. Her voice is barely more than a whisper.

“She texted us separately.”

“So no to the sex,” Anya nods and feels some of the tension eke out of her. It’s not that she doesn’t want to, she just isn’t ready. She needs to know that they’re both serious about her.

“She would have put that in the group chat.” Clarke bites her lip as she looks to Anya in the dark. “Not that I would mind if that happened… the three of us.”

Anya nods, not sure if Clarke can see her, but she feels Clarke’s hand wrap around hers and it’s reassuring. 

“Maybe we should go find out what she wants,” Clarke says and Anya can almost hear the soft smile in her voice.

Raven’s room is dark and Anya can just make out her form sitting on the bed up against the wall. She looks small, lost amongst the blankets and the darkness. Raven holds out her hands. Clarke shuts the door behind them and she and Anya cross to the bed in silence. The three of them sit in a triangle, only touching when they breathe.

Raven taps on her leg, suddenly nervous and wondering if the resolve she had when she sent the text will hold at all. “We need to decide what we’re doing before we complicate things too much.”

“I think Clarke led us past that gate when she kissed us both.”

“You kissed me right after.”

Clarke reaches out a tentative hand to both the girls in the dark, “I think we all crashed through that together.”

“Then are we dating or not?” Raven spits the words out before she can stop herself.

The silence, like the darkness, envelops them.

Anya presses forward onto her knees and kisses Raven on the cheek, feeling for a moment as if she can say what’s in her heart. “I would like that, a lot.”

“I think I would, too,” Clarke answers shyly. For all her bravado in making them all admit there’s something between them she finds feelings and words are harder than actions.

Raven’s heart is in her throat, and she feels twice as exhausted as she did tossing and turning alone in bed. “Good,” she whispers, “Now that we’ve got that settled, can my girlfriends come to bed, because I can’t sleep.”

Clarke laughs as she leans forward and kisses Raven softly. “You’re cute when you’re cranky.”

“It’s dark, Clarke, you can’t see me.”

“Yeah, but I still know you’re cute.”

Raven kisses Clarke back and then shoves her down onto the bed with a huff and an eye roll.

“You know you could have just asked us to come cuddle,” Anya says softly as she pushes Raven down into bed and pulls the blankets over the three of them. There’s an edge of laughter in her voice. 

Raven nudges her head against Anya’s shoulder and sets her teeth gently against it as if in warning, _just let this be, we’ve been honest_. She snuggles down between Clarke and Anya as they all shift and find how they fit together in the double bed, arms around waists, noses pressed to collarbones and shoulder blades, chins tucked over heads. She doesn’t respond right away, just absorbing how it feels. The idea of dating, the way the word girlfriends fell easily from her lips as it glided across her tongue. How it was right and natural and what she needed to calm her mind. 

“This is better,” she whispers into the dark.


	14. Anya/Clarke/Raven | college roommates!au pt 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: broken glass

Clarke is sprawled out on the couch with her head in Raven’s lap. She’s reading and rereading a text message and not really paying attention to much else. Raven is trying to study and Anya is lounging on the floor with her textbooks. It’s questionable whether she’s actually prepping for dead week or if she’s sleeping of a Thanksgiving dinner stupor. They’ve been home for an hour, having spent the day at Clarke’s mother’s house for the holiday and it’s been silent since they walked in the door. Clarke clicks her phone off and drops it to her chest.

Thanksgiving at The Griffin House was a standing tradition by senior year. Raven refused to give up study time to fly across the country to her mother’s place– even though it was on the beach and subsequently warmer than home– and Anya’s parents didn’t celebrate. This year they’d agreed to keep up tradition as to not raise suspicion, just show up like they always did. They had decided not to say anything about their relationship. Their relationship was a scant two months old and they had decided a few weeks back they weren’t ready to put it under that kind of pressure.

Rolling onto her side Clarke sets her teeth gently against Raven’s stomach. Raven responds by absentmindedly petting Clarke’s head. Clarke nips at her again, this time a little harder.

“Do not put holes in my shirt, please,” Raven reprimands without looking away from her textbook. 

Clarke whines.

“Are you whining because she’s ignoring you or because you can’t put holes in her shirt?” Anya reaches up with her foot and prods Clarke in in the ass.

Clarke whines again.

“The former,” Clarke clarifies, her voice muffled, lost into the crease of Raven’s hip.

Raven sighs but she’s smiling as she sets her textbook aside. She nudges Clarke into a sitting position and tucks the mess of blond hair back away from her face. “What’s up, sunshine?” She bites her lip and holds back a laugh unable to help smiling at Clarke’s sleepy frown.

“I think my mom knows about us.”

“Ya think?” Anya says with a roll of her eyes. She pulls herself to her knees and lays across Raven’s lap to look up at Clarke. “After you proceeded to plop yourself down in my lap and twenty minutes later do the same to Raven she kept smiling at us like she wanted us to tell her something that she knew better than to ask about.” Anya shrugs and hooks her finger through Clarke’s belt loop. “If she does, she doesn’t seem to mind.”

“You did tell her you were bi, right?” Raven asks as she reaches for her water glass.

“Yeah, remember freshman year?”

“Right, what was her name again?”

“The fewer people that remember who I made out with at that first party the better.” It was a long time ago, but the other girl doesn’t remember. Still, it was enough that Clarke came out to her mom a few weeks later.

Raven starts laughing, and lays against Anya’s back as she shakes with it. Anya’s eyes go wide as she remembers. Clarke closes her eyes in a silent prayer.

“Bellamy is going to kill me someday,” Clarke mutters.

“Only if she remembers,” Anya laughs and pats Clarke’s thigh.

“Back to the matter at hand. We had discussed keeping this,” Clarke gestures between the three of them, “Low key until we were ready.”

“Clarke,” Raven says her name like it’s a reminder. “Your mom likes Anya and me, and she’s chill, it’s okay if she figures it out.”

“Mrs. G is honestly like the least of our worries.” Anya winks and kisses Clarke’s knee. “Considering we’ll probably have to disown Murphy when he finds out, and my parents are probably going to take some work since they’re still a little confused about how I can like boys and girls but not want to date boys.”

“You think we’ll tell them?” Raven runs her fingers through Anya’s hair.

“Maybe after graduation. Though they have been asking about our Christmas plans,” Anya looks up at Raven.

Clarke turns over her phone in her hands and snuggles against Raven as she reaches for Anya’s arm and wraps it around her waist. “My mom texted on our drive back. She implied I should ask  you both what your plans are and let her know when you’ll both be in town over winter break. She said something about a non-traditional Christmas celebration.”

The glass slips from Raven’s hand, hitting the sidetable and shattering on the floor. Water and glass spill in every direction. Anya jumps up to avoid the mess before it reaches her and lands half in Clarke’s and half in Raven’s lap.

“Sorry.” Raven says as she pulls Anya more securely up and onto their laps. “What I’m getting is that the three of us lack any subtlety at all when it comes to–”

Anya shifts and sits up, half straddling Raven’s lap and half straddling Clarke’s, copying Clarke’s maneuver that started them all off.

“–this.” Raven swallows and looks up at Anya who’s looking down at her, grinning and satisfied. 

“Subtlety is overrated,” Anya kisses Raven softly. There’s an edge to it though as she bites down on Raven’s bottom lip, tugging on it. Clarke makes a noise low in her throat like she’s trying to compose herself. Raven leans forward melting into the kiss. A moment later Anya pulls back, a smirk on her lips. “Maybe we just let people think what they want, and fuck them if they don’t like it.”

Clarke tugs Anya toward her, “So then that’s a yes for family time?”

Anya half closes her eyes and nods, her bottom lip between her teeth like she has other things on her mind.

Raven leans over and kisses Clarke’s shoulder, “Anyone that has a problem will have us to answer to. And I don’t think they’ll like what we have to say.” 

Clarke nods and tosses her phone to the side, knowing she’s going to lose it to the couch, but she doesn’t care. Right now she has her girlfriends, and a lazy three day weekend ahead of them.


	15. Lexaven | prompt: things you said in the dark

Raven wakes in the middle of the night overheated and covered in a layer of sweat. She kicks at the sheets and grumbles to herself, wondering if they left the heat up higher than normal because of the snow storm outside. She tries to do her best to cling to unconsciousness so she can fall back asleep without a problem, her alarm goes off before the sun is up and they went to bed late.

Turning over she curls around Lexa pulling a pliant sleeping Lexa against her front. A very _warm_  pliant sleeping Lexa. Lexa who is usually half frozen all night long and snuggles up to Raven as if she’s a heater. Lexa who needs an extra blanket on her side of the bed sometimes.

Raven’s awake now whether she wants to be or not, because she’s worried. Lexa never gets sick. She brushes her hand against Lexa’s forehead, doing her best not wake her. Lexa’s forehead is damp with sweat and she feels like a furnace.

Lexa stirs under Raven’s touch and struggles against the blankets.

“Why’s it…. hot…” Lexa pushes feebly at the blankets tucked in between the bed and the wall.

Raven loosely folds the extra blanket on top of the bed and tucks it up above their heads in case they need it again. She nudges Lexa onto her back and presses her hand to the side of Lexa’s neck.

“Why’re _you_  cold?” Lexa mumbles as her eyes flutter open. “Rae?”

Even in the dark Raven can seen the concern in Lexa’s eyes as she moves to start checking Raven over. Raven leans over and presses her lips to Lexa’s forehead.

“Lay back down, you’ve got a fever, a bad one.” There’s a hint of a smile in Raven’s voice because she knows Lexa will protest.

“Not possible, I have an exam in the morning.”

“Babe, you’re so hot you woke me up.”

“Of course I’m hot,” Lexa mutters as she slowly presses up into sitting, “Don’t see why my attractiveness would be cause to wake you up though.”

Raven snorts.

“Don’t laugh,” Lexa admonishes, her voice soft and slow, as if her words are far away from what she’s thinking. “Why is the room spinning. It shouldn’t do that.”

Choking down a laugh, Raven quietly, but firmly settles Lexa back down in bed and cuddles her to her chest. She catches Lexa’s hair up in a loose bun and let’s Lexa lay on top of her even though it means she’ll be overheated for the rest of the night. When she’s sick it’s the only way she’ll sleep sometimes.

Closing her eyes Raven’s thankful at least that it’s dark, that the sun isn’t starting to peek over the horizon, that they’re having this exchange in the depths of the night when she still has a chance at sleep.

“I’m cold.” Lexa murmurs and burrows down against her girlfriend.

“I know, Lex, you have a fever.” Raven replies, half asleep already and tightens her arms around Lexa’s waist.

“Not possible-”

“-you have an exam in the morning.”

“’xactly.” Lexa barely gets the word out before she’s asleep again.


	16. Clexa | prompt: things you said under the stars in the grass

The stars looked different from the ground.

And then again they didn’t.

Clarke had spent most of the last year staring up at the stars all day and night, except when she was staring down at Earth. It wasn’t the same staring down at the earth now that she was on Earth. Up close it was harsh and cold and beautiful and liable to kill her, much like the leader of the people they had found on the ground.

Maybe that’s why Lexa was, the way she was, she was a product of the earth. The cold had seeped into her bones, the harsh, stark beauty carved her into the legendary demi-god that she was.

Clarke had dreamed of the Earth from afar, fallen in love with it. There’s a tug though, deep inside her that whispers that perhaps she had fallen in love with Lexa.

It’s too soon, it’s too much. The logical side of her brain rallies and tries to keep her going, moving forward, rationalizing that she was forced to kill Finn only a few weeks ago, that her heart is too frail to be broken again, to suffer another loss. It’s all just too close.

A lot like the Earth.

Clarke sits down just outside of the camp, still within eyesight of the guards, but far enough away that the only light around her is from the stars. The moon is gone that night. She’s never seen a sky without the moon. It feels naked and dark and yet, brighter.

The stars burn her eyes until tears sting in the corners and the part of her that spent the past year surviving by drawing by scurrying away from the hard, cold, rational reality blurs into focus as she lays back in the dewy grass.

Tomorrow they march on Mount Weather to save their friends. She shoves the thought from her mind and lets herself bathe in the starlight. Maybe, for a few moments, she can lose herself.

“ _Klark_ ,” Lexa says her name like an admonishment and a prayer and Clarke doesn’t  know who she’s more frustrated with. The ‘k’ clicks at either end of her name and Clarke feels compelled to listen, to sit up, to move, to do whatever Lexa asks of her.

She remains resolutely in the damp grass even as she feels the wet soak through her pants. “Lexa,” she intones. It doesn’t have the same ring and she wonders how Lexa can command so much with a singular syllable.

“You need your rest.”

“And so do you.”

Lexa stops walking and Clarke can feel the eye roll without looking at her, without Lexa saying a single thing, and she _knows_. Out of the corner of her eye she glances at Lexa catching sight of pursed lips, hand resting idly on her dagger, fingers tapping impatiently. They haven’t known each other long enough to understand each other like this.

Clarke looks back up at the stars and lets the haze take back over. The dream like hope that the sight gives her, the one that got her through a year without contact from another person. Except… she doesn’t want to be alone. She came out here to be alone, but it wasn’t solitude that she searched for.

“Sit with me?” Clarke asks quietly. If they only have one more night before they risk their lives she wants to spend it with Lexa.


	17. Clarktavia | prompt: things you said while I cried in your arms

“You’re leaving.”

It isn’t a question but an accusation and all Clarke can do is slow her walking. If she stops she won’t do it, and she has to leave. There’s nothing left for her here, not with the grounders, not with the arkers. She’s lost everyone that matters in one way or another.

“Clarke!” Octavia snaps.

Clarke half expects an angry hand on her arm to hold her back but she doesn’t even hear footfalls behind her, chasing after.

Just another person willing to let her walk away.

She’s almost gathered the strength to resume a normal pace when Octavia’s voice cuts through her thoughts, quiet and hurt.

“You’re leaving _me_.”

Clarke closes her eyes and her feet stop moving. She curses slightly under her breath. Octavia had never been anything more than a friend, despite how close they had grown after the deaths of their hearts the pain hung over them like a cloud of despair and they couldn’t look at each other without relieving the moment a careless man used a gun to change their lives for the worse.

She turns her head to the side and back slowly, shaking it. Soft footsteps hurry then stop behind her. Octavia reaches out, her hand is heavy on Clarke’s shoulder. Clarke almost shakes it off, the anguish is almost too much for her to bear. Since they landed on the ground she’s been carrying everyone else’s life and safety in her hands no matter how many times she tried to turn away. She can’t do it any longer.

There’s so much blood on her hands she’ll never be clean.

“Don’t leave without me,” Octavia whispers just barely louder than the wind.

The words twist and crack the walls around Clarke’s heart and she turns, her knees hitting the ground, her forehead pressed to Octavia’s thigh. The sob is silent and thick and she can’t breathe around it. Tears fall down her face, the feeling startling and unfamiliar. She hasn’t cried since they burned Lexa’s body.

She had to carry the fate of the world only to find it’s too late to save it, only to fail at her attempt. There are no words for the world weary pain that’s wearing her down and so she cries, clinging to Octavia, only barely registering her friend kneeling down and pulling Clarke into her arms.

They’re still there, on the ridge above the camp when the sun finishes setting. Octavia whispering against Clarke’s hair. Things like _don’t leave without me_ , and _forget about what they’ve done_... _we’re better off without them now_.

No grounder would dare face them, no arker would dare stop them leaving.

In the whole world it was as if it shrunk to that moment there for Clarke with Octavia’s arms around her. Something struck her with hope, as if this start might change what they have left, even as they’re doomed. Despite that tug Clarke can’t quit the flood of tears and silent screaming.

Octavia pulls her tighter, hands gently caressing her hair and back. “If we stay together now, at least we won’t be alone when it ends.”


	18. Ranya | prompt: things you said with my lips on your neck

Raven can feel the cockiness rolling through her like liquor in her veins, except she’s sober, and it’s Anya watching her that has her feeling like this. She sways her hips and it draws Anya’s gaze as her pace slows, drawing out the moments between where she is and her girlfriend. 

Honestly she’d just left her room to get a glass of water before she went back to studying, but Anya had stared at her like she was the most stunning person she had ever seen as Raven stood there in baggy sweatpants and a tank top. 

She still wasn’t used to someone looking at her like that, like she was whole and beautiful and desireable. Not with the raw sincerity that permeated everything Anya emoted. 

As much as she wants to be in Anya’s lap she wants that gaze on her just as much. It’s heady and intoxicating.

Raven’s knee presses into the couch on one side of Anya’s lap, she takes another step and she’s straddling Anya, still standing. Anya reaches out, her hands cupping behind Raven’s knees. She doesn’t shy away from Raven’s brace underneath her sweats, just runs her hands up the backs of Raven’s legs until her hands wrap around Raven’s waist and she helps her lower down onto the couch.

Except, Anya doesn’t make it feel like she’s helping Raven. Instead Raven feels like her girlfriend is teasing her, touching her, making it all normal.

The first kiss is a soft firm press of lips, Anya’s hands are still firm on Raven’s hips, keeping her in place so she can’t roll her hips, can’t press closer. An ache blossoms in the pit of her stomach, spiraling outward until she feels it start to crack her cool, calm, cocky exterior. Anya kisses her harder and she feels it shatter.

For a few moments she thought she had the upperhand, that with Anya staring at her, lips parted, that she might come out on top, but Anya’s hand presses flat against her stomach and she feels the sharp press of nails and she knows that she played right into Anya’s game. Raven keens, needing more.

More kissing, more nails, more teeth, more touching, more friction.

She presses a kiss to the corner of Anya’s mouth, her jaw, and then her neck. Sucking gently Raven alternates kisses with teeth lightly tugging at skin. 

Anya’s hands are on her body, holding her firmly in place even as they roam, just enough to drive Raven crazy.

“Anya…” she whispers, lips against Anya’s neck.

Anya purrs a hum in response and continues with her teasing.

Raven doesn’t want to beg, but every time she goes to move her body into place, press closer, Anya pushes her back. “Please…”

“You think it’s going to be that easy?” 

Raven can hear the smile in Anya’s voice, the assuredness and control.

“I have you exactly where I want you.” Anya digs her nails into Raven’s back and scratches down it. Raven whimpers and her hips buck, she bites down on Anya’s neck. “That is, if you want this.” Anya presses down on Raven’s hips, making it clear what she means.

That if Raven says yes she’s giving in to Anya for the night, letting her take the control, set the pace. Raven would be at her whim. 

Raven sits up, her fingertips trail across Anya’s shoulders and down her arms, “I want.”


	19. Anya/Clarke/Raven | college roommates!au pt 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: things you said at four am on the phone

The bed feels empty with only two of them.

Having room to stretch and turn without elbowing someone feels like a luxury and Clarke keeps waking up cold instead of pressed between both her girlfriends, safe and warm and unable to twister herself up in positions that leave her aching in the morning.

Clarke rolls over to find Anya and has to roll back to move aside the sheets and duvet and find herself to Anya’s side where she’s pressed into the the edge against the wall.

She scoots closer, arm wrapping around Anya’s waist, tucking her leg around Anya’s, her nose pressed to Anya’s shoulder. If she could she would climb into the space between the wall and Anya, anything to feel what she’s become accustomed to feeling at night.

Anya stirs, making a confused noise much like a cat as she wakes to find Clarke glommed onto her. 

“Babe?” she questions as she hears Clarke sniffle and wiggle closer at the sound of her voice.

“Bed’s too big.” Clarke presses the words to Anya’s skin. “Raven’s not here.”

“She’ll be back at the end of the week when she’s done presenting at her conference.” Anya heaves out a sigh and snuggles backward to get Clarke to give her some space so she can turn over. “It’s only a few days more.” She kisses Clarke’s forehead.

“We haven’t heard from her in a week,” Clarke pulls Anya closer, her heart aches even with the love she feels as Anya relents and cuddles her. “And I _know_ , time zones, but why is Australia _so_ far away?

“What I want to know is why we didn’t try to go with her,” Anya muses.

“They wouldn’t pay for us.”

“It should just be expected that if they want our girl they have to bring us too.”

Anya pulls Clarke closer to her and rolls onto her back then onto her side again so Clarke is against the wall. She tucks them both into the blankets and the corner of the bed. Truth is she’s been missing Raven just as much, but she’s been able to sleep, unlike Clarke. If they cuddle together and line the other third of the bed with pillows it’s almost like she’s with them, but not quite. Pillows and the wall will never be as warm as Raven.

A phone buzzes on the bed, lost beneath the pillows and the blankets. Anya reaches behind her, scrambling for it. Her brain processes two things at once, Raven is facetiming them, and it’s four in the morning. She groans through her smile, knowing tomorrow morning’s class is going to be rough. Kissing Clarke on the nose she hits answer.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” Raven ducks her head but she’s smiling at her phone.

“Raven!” Clarke cries out excitedly even as she snuggles into the crook of Anya’s arm.

“Hey, you,” Anya says softly. “We couldn’t sleep.”

“I hate this timezone difference, and that they’ve had me running around crazy. I’m supposed to be dressing up for some fancy reception right now, but it’s gorgeous here and I miss you two.”

“We’re not leaving bed for a week when you get home,” Clarke yawns.

Anya kisses the top of her head, she can already feel Clarke starting to nod off now that she’s tucked in tight between the wall and her girlfriend, listening to her other girlfriend’s voice.

Raven laughs, “Whatever you want.”

“She isn’t sleeping well,” Anya looks up at her phone, her heart constricting at the sight of Raven. She still isn’t used to feeling so deeply, not like this, not for more than one person.

“Is that why she’s passing out?”

“Am not.”

“She misses you... I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”


	20. Anya/Luna/Raven | land sea sky pt1

Anya still isn’t used to the sound of Luna’s laugh echoing through the halls of the Polis tower, or sending the butterflies into the air when it bursts through the air like a rainbow after the showers. It’s been years since Lexa and Luna and Anya would sneak off from training to relax between the fronds under the overgrown plants kept in the greenhouse. It tugs at her heart. She misses having her friend around.

This war needs to end so Floukru doesn’t live in fear of the other clans, now twelve in number.

She picks her way through the greenhouse, her hands feel like they dangle uselessly at her sides as she doesn’t have her weapons to fiddle with. There’s no need for them today, no ceremony, no visits from hostile ambassadors. Lexa is relaxing with Clarke up in the top of the tower.

The warmth of it sticks to her skin and she lets her pace slow, just listening to the gentle burbling of the indoor spring and the soft chatter of Luna and Raven on the far side of the expansive space. Lexa had set up Raven with a workshop down there to tinker with technology. Not many people have access, not when the space is filled with so many Commander’s Monarchs. Even in the daylight the butterflies glow softly, casting a blue haze in the shade.

She sees Luna and Raven before they see her.

She isn’t sure if she should stay or go, or what the flip flopping nervous tick of desire that punches her in the gut means. The three of them have been dancing around each other, not quite, anything, and yet, more than just friends for much of the past three months since Luna arrived.

Anya’s been hesitant to see what might happen between the three of them. There’s too much uncertain in their future for her to risk the distraction, and yet, when she’s with them her heart feels at ease.

Luna leans into Raven, one arm wrapped around either side as she stands behind her, whispering into her ear. Raven laughs and leans into Luna, her face scrunches up with the joy. She brushes her nose across Luna’s cheek.

For a moment Anya thinks they might kiss and she feels herself flush. She should turn and go, leave them to their happiness. It’s a bittersweet pang to see them like this. She wants it to be her, but she’s glad that it’s them. Anya turns to leave, but her feet get caught up in the root of something snaking across the path.

Anya, competent warrior, the Heda’s general, trips over a tree root while trying to escape being seen by the women her heart beats for. She stumbles out of the tree line and straightens up. The irony of the moment isn’t lost on her.

“Enjoying the show?” Raven grins and Anya swears she winks, but her own focus is on Luna who is looking at her with such a quiet longing. They’ve been looking at each other that way for too many years to number.

With her lips still brushing Raven’s cheek Luna whispers just loud enough for them both to hear, “I know this one well, and I can tell from the way her ears have gone pink that she is.”

Anya rolls her eyes and strides across the small clearing to where Raven’s workbench has been set on a smooth stone outcropping. It was probably once the marble flooring of the building, one small part that had yet to be reclaimed by the jungle like garden Lexa kept. “It’s only really a show if this is for my benefit.” She gestures between them as she leans against the high table. Her hands come to rest just inches from where Luna and Raven’s sit.

“And who says it isn’t?” Raven cocks her head to the side.

Luna smacks her in the arm. “Be good.”

“Oh come on,” Anya grins. She finds herself biting her lip and leaning closer. “We know being good is never any fun.”

Luna taps her fingers on the table, her hand wavering between staying still and reaching out to either of them. “Bend the rules, don’t break them.”

“Like the surface tension of water at the top of a glass, defying gravity.” Anya grins.

Luna smiles at that and her hand settles down, fingers pressed flat to the table. Anya watches their hands, all so close but not quite touching. She catches Raven watching her and Luna in turn, Luna doing much the same. And Anya herself lets her focus shift. Again, just on the edge of something but not quite letting themselves cross except this time they’ve said it.

What they do is for each other, as much as for themselves.

It’s Raven who scoots her hand across the inches between them, fingertips just touching the edges of Luna and Anya. No one moves, and for a moment no one breathes. Anya feels the touch like a lightning strike to her heart, and when Luna shifts her hand to touch Anya as well it shakes her to her core.

“So did you come out here to flirt or help?” Raven laughs, not moving her hand.

“Who says I can’t do both?” Anya raises an eyebrow and laughs when Luna smacks her in the arm. This is what she’s missed all these years. She leans over the workbench and listens intently as Raven begins to explain her project.

Whatever comes next, maybe they’ll have this.

Whatever this is.


	21. Luna/Raven | Prompt: The stars or space

The only sound is the waves lapping up against the rocks on the shoreline, quiet and calm, it’s a steady hush. It’s dark, no moon even in the night sky to light it up, and the city is a half mile hike inland. It’s only the stars and Raven, sitting alone on a large flat rock that rarely gets covered by the high tide, but still sits on the water’s edge at low tide. She stares out at the water toward the horizon she can no longer see and looks for the glitter of the stars in the waters reflection.

It’s vast and dark and unknowable as space.

She had meant to get back to camp before the light was gone, having no light of her own, and the path is not clear, but she had lain there in the setting sun watching the colors change and let her mind drift. She had half woken, half come to when she realized that she was alone in the dark. Lying back she had let herself drift again. It was cold, but she’d been colder. And there, on the beach on the outskirts of Polis she’s safe for now on the border between the Trikru and the Floukru.

Above her stretches the scar of the Milky Way and below her its reflection, the night is so dark and black. She knows she should move, stretch, anything, or she won’t be able to without a great deal of pain, but her body feels far away and she lets her mind float away in the blackness and the shimmer of the starlight.

Raven registers the soft footfalls of someone skilled at moving quietly, the shift it the quality of the air around her but it’s as far away as the dull ache in her low back. Even without moving there’s a familiarity to the gate and the warmth that settles next to her. She knows without looking that Luna is with her.

With her body anyway, her mind is drifting far away from the pain and heartache of this place, dreaming that she’s floating in a sea in the sky, not needing a suit for her spacewalk, but she can feel the starlight shine on her skin. Dreams she had when she was little. Anything to take her away from what she had been left with here on Earth.

Dead boyfriends, broken friendships, no family to call her own. Leadership had left a vile taste in her mouth and she had nearly lost her own life saving people who were more likely to vilify her than think about what she had sacrificed. So she sought out tranquility and silence.

Except when it came to the few who had been there in the end, the ones that she stood with at the end of the war. The others that carried the weight of the decisions made.

When she feels Luna scoot close enough that Raven can feel a thin line of heat between them she doesn’t move. Her body feels cold and she doesn’t want to come back from the expanse of space before her. She could just reach out, scoop up the stars in her palm, bright, shining beacons of hope and beauty.

When Luna rests a hand across her spine she breathes deeply into the touch, but stays fixated on the floating weightlessness she feels disconnected from her body. If she could only let it go she could be anywhere and everywhere at once. She tries to tell herself that no one would really miss her but there’s a voice in the side of her mind that tells her that’s a lie.

When Luna runs her hand along Raven’s spine, cupping the back of her skull she lets Luna move her, pull her sideways into an embrace. Her eyes flutter closed and she lays her head on Luna’s shoulder, her nose pressed to the warmth of Luna’s neck. She takes in another deep breath and lets herself settle into her body once more the weight of it, the cold, the pain, the way Luna’s arms feel like solid ground and safety.

“You’re freezing,” Luna whispers.

They’ve been dancing around each other. Not quite landing together but orbiting each other. Lately though, since things calmed down, they’ve been shifting closer. So close that they don’t keep the space between them like they should. Raven slides her hand under the edge of Luna’s open jacket and wraps her fingers around the hem of Luna’s shirt tucked at her side.

“The stars are out.” Raven says by way of an answer. Her body is heavy with exhaustion. “I wanted to float away on the sea of them.”

“And leave me behind?” Luna chides, but there’s an edge of something else in her voice, teasing, but also concern.

Raven nuzzles Luna’s neck as she shakes her head no. The words catch in her throat. It’s one thing to let Luna hold her, calm her down, ground her and bring her back to herself, but it’s another to say what it means out loud, to admit what she feels and what she wants.

“Then where would you meet me?” She feels the press of Luna’s lips against the side of her head and Luna brushes her hand across Raven’s head, gentle, protective.

Raven sits up and turns so her back is to Luna and she’s cradled between her legs. They’re looking out across the sea in the same direction. Raven wraps Luna’s arms around her and presses their cheeks together. She reaches up one and, fingers sliding behind Luna’s head, tangling in her hair, holding her softly, but firmly. With her other hand she points to a bright cluster of stars.

“There,” she whispers. “I’ve seen in through a telescope on the arc. That nebula is as blue as your lagoon that you’ve claimed, the gases and stars a swirling seascape in the night sky. I would show you the beauty of the stars from close up… well closer.” Raven almost laughs and Luna squeezes her arms tighter, pulling Raven closer. “Up close we would burn up, too bright, too hot, too insignificant to matter in the grand scheme of things. The universe is so much more vast than we are, and no matter what we do it will continue on long after we’re gone.”

Luna starts to rock them gently and Raven can almost feel her thinking. She waits. The press of Luna’s cheek against hers doesn’t lessen, nor does the protective tightness of her arms, as if she can hold Raven to herself, if only she holds on Raven won’t float away on the sea of stars.

“We all return to the sea in the end, but while we are here, while we are small in comparison, we matter to each other. To those around us we are not insignificant, but as bright as stars.”

Raven nods, a warmth pooling inside her that she hasn’t felt for months. Her heart aches in ways she had forgotten she could feel. She settles down into Luna’s embrace. “Stay with me.”

“Until the universe ends.”


	22. Anya/Luna/Raven | land sea sky pt2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: stolen kiss

Raven sits on the edge of Clarke’s drawing table fidgeting with hem of her shirt. It’s summer and Polis is warm, warmer than she’s ever felt anything except a boiler room on the ark. She can’t bring herself to look at Clarke, not as she tries to get the words past her lips because what she needs to ask and what she’s willing to admit don’t mix.

She’s never felt like this about anyone in her life. Not even Finn. With him it had been different. It had been clear and straightforward and she knew where she stood, but with Luna and Anya she doesn’t know if she’s starting something or if she’s in the way.

Clarke drops her graphite onto the table and stares at Raven. “What is it? You’ve been staring at the floor for ten minutes now after you asked if you could talk in private. Spill.”

“I don’t know how to say this,” Raven tugs at her shirt and stands with a start. Her feelings are welling up inside her and they’re going to burst out of her whether she wants them to or not. “I want to kiss Luna… but I also want to kiss Anya.”

Clarke makes a noise that is halfway between a snort and a laugh.

“They’re both into you if you haven’t noticed, what’s the problem?” Clarke reaches across the desk and prods Raven with her pencil. 

Raven rolls her eyes, “I can’t just go kiss them  _ both _ , besides…”

“Besides, what? If you haven’t noticed, grounders have a bit different outlook on intimacy than most of the skaikru.”

“You and Lexa are monogamous.”

“Because we talked about it.” Clarke sets her art supplies aside and moves around to lean next to Raven.  

“I feel like I’m getting between them,” Raven says quietly, she’s staring at the floor again, but the thought of it has her heart in her stomach. She and Luna and Anya have been playing at something, flirting, passing time together, and maybe there’s something more, but Luna and Anya have a history that she can’t match.

Clarke lets herself slide into Raven.

Raven looks over at Clarke to see a bemused smile on her face. She narrows her eyes because there isn’t anything funny about this at all. “So you’re saying that they want to kiss, and that you want to kiss them… so go do it. Kiss them while they’re kissing each other.”

“What?!” Raven hates the high pitched timbre of the sound that comes out of her mouth but she can’t quite believe what Clarke is suggesting. Not that she hasn’t thought about this exact scenario, but it had been just that, a dream, a fantasy. It didn’t matter how much she played along with Luna when they would flirt in front of Anya, and with Anya… she never felt like it would be real.

“Luna is into you, it’s obvious, and Anya likes you and Anya hardly likes anyone. I think you should go kiss them both and see what happens.” Clarke bites back a grin. “You’re Raven fucking Reyes, Commander of Boom, and Tek Advisor to the Heda, who would say no to you?” 

Raven looks away but Clarke nudges her and she looks back.

“Besides, you’re my best friend and you light up when you’re around them both. I just want you to be happy.” She reaches out her hand and takes Raven’s, squeezing it before she lets go.

Raven lets out a steadying breath and nods to herself. Clarke is right, when Raven isn’t letting the voice filled with doubt worm its way into her thoughts she knows that there’s an almost between her and Luna and her and Anya. There’s always been something between Luna and Anya. They’re stuck in a holding pattern, spiralling closer and closer until they crash.

She’d rather they catch each other as they land.

“I’ve got to go.” She barely looks back at Clarke until she’s almost out the door. “Thanks!” she calls over her shoulder. 

The thought is boiling now, churning through her, pushing her forward. She watches some of the tower staff jump out of her way as she strides down the hall to the elevator. There’s a good chance Luna and Anya are in the garden that afternoon. They tend to stay for a while after the lesson with the Natblida. She’s impatient, practically bouncing as the elevator dips slowly toward the ground, afraid she’ll lose her resolve if she takes too long to get there.

Anya and Luna are right where she expects to find them, talking underneath the shade of a giant fern in the greenhouse. They’re standing closer than really needed, both in what Raven has come to think of as their Polis garb. Soft loose fabrics, tied and delicately belted in place. Neither wears the war paint she had grown used to. They’re gentler here, more themselves, but no less fierce or beautiful. Luna reaches out, her fingertips brushing the back of Anya’s hand. That’s where Raven’s nerve dies.

She trips over a root and rights herself to find both of them staring her down. The words she’d planned die in her throat, suddenly parched and thick. There’s no way she can go through with what she came here to do, but she has no other excuse, no reason to be there right then, not in that part of the greenhouse, not that day. 

Raven swallows thickly and stops a few short paces from them.

The thought hands in the air, the one that they could kiss. The could all kiss each other. Raven doesn’t have to say it for them to all feel it. There was a shift and there’s no going back. She breathes in, deeper and quicker than she needs. 

Luna looks to Raven, she could feel it the moment their eyes met, that she’s finally ready. Her attention flicks to Anya, waiting to see if she’s with them or not. Anya has always been the one to pull away. There was always a reason, it was almost always war. There won’t be another war for a while. Yet there’s still something holding her back.

Anya watches Raven and Luna, both breathing deep and trying to keep steady. She’s watched them these past few months as they grew closer, as Raven opened up to Luna’s advances, and in turn Raven fell deeper into her friendship with Anya. There’s an unmistakeable electricity hanging over them and Anya feels like it isn’t for her. She’s just a bystander in the storm waiting to crash together where the sea meets the sky. She takes a step backwards and turns to go.

Luna catches Anya’s hand, “No.” It’s don’t go. Don’t stop this from happening again. Her heart stops as Anya turns and crashes back into her. She’s been thinking about this kiss since she was a teenager, still training to be the next Heda. She’s imagined it a thousand times over and all the ways it could happen. Never would she have known to prepare herself for the way it breaks her wide open. Her hand tangles in Anya’s hair and she doesn’t let up, lips parting even as she goes in for another bruising kiss. She doesn’t come up for air and neither does Anya. This kiss is more than a decade in the making and she lets herself lose a part of her to it.

They only break when Luna feels herself go light-headed from need of air. She rests her forehead against Anya’s soaking in the feeling, trying to process.

Anya brushes her thumb across Luna’s cheek. Too long she’s been afraid to do just that, kiss one of her closest friends. She’s increasingly away of Raven watching them from within arm’s reach, unmoving as everything they’ve come to know for certain is swept away. Raven had strode in with an air of confidence that screamed she had made a decision about them, but it was Luna that had stolen the first kiss.

Her body still trembles with it. Luna, still wrapped up in her arms, chest heaving, is focused on her. It isn’t until Anya feels a tug on her belt that she remembers to look back to Raven.

“My turn,” Raven practically growls.

Anya lets herself be tugged a few inches out of Luna’s arms, but not completely, only to fall into Raven. She moves to Raven readily, not really thinking, just knowing that this is what she wants. If she had a choice she wouldn’t have to choose between them. There’s a small voice of doubt in the back of her mind that won’t go away even with Raven’s lips pressed firmly to hers. She sighs into the kiss and can’t hold back the moan that comes when Raven sinks her teeth into Anya’s bottom lip.

She cups her hands gently around Raven’s face and sighs contentedly as she pulls back, breaking the kiss. There are words and feelings bubbling inside her but she doesn’t know what to say or where to go from there. 

Raven’s heart is pounding in her chest so intently that her sternum feels bruised from the inside. Anya’s hands are on her in a way they never have been before, in a way no one’s hands really have been in a long time. Luna has come close, but there was always a hard line they didn’t cross.

That line has been dissolved as if it were no more than a sketch in the sand as the tide rolled in.

Raven shivers as Luna’s hands snake around her waist and she steps into the circle of Anya’s arms with her. Turning slightly she leans into Luna, their foreheads pressed together. They’ve been close to this before, but that had always kept that line in the sand, neither remembering who drew it. She isn’t certain who leans in first, just that when she goes to kiss Luna, Luna is already kissing her. It’s a soft press of lips, a hint of a promise of more. She feels Luna’s lips part and the warm swipe of her tongue.

She dives in.

Clarke’s teasing advice echoes in Raven’s head and she smiles into the kiss. She laughs and shakes her head, pulling back from Luna. Her heart is bubbling with joy and she just wants to bask in the moment. This feels right, and maybe, just maybe for once they’re all on the same page. She looks up to Anya and then back to Luna, knowing that the grin on her face is ridiculous, but she can’t stop it, she doesn’t care to either. She kissed them and they kissed her back and they kissed each other and it didn’t break them.

Luna leans in and pecks Raven on the nose before stepping back, “Well, now that we’ve got that settled…” 

She makes it all of two steps away before both Raven and Anya reach for her, pulling her back into their arms. There’s a brightness and an ease that they know might fade, but they’ve been denying themselves too long to not let this moment be kind to them. Raven slips between them both as they embrace. Whatever comes next may be impossible, but for now she lets herself be happy.

Anya’s voice is gentle but firm, muffled slightly by the press of her lips the the side of Raven’s head, “We need to go somewhere more private and talk about this… us…”

Raven reaches an arm behind her and half wraps it around Anya so her hand cups her shoulder. “Shh… there’s an us, and right now that’s all that matters.”

Luna nods, and there’s a mischievousness in her voice, “Somewhere private would be good… for  _ talking _ …”

Raven’s breath catches in her throat:  _ kiss them while they kiss each other _ .


	23. Princess Mechanic | prompt: coming home

Clarke hadn’t expected seeing her mother with someone to hit her like this. It had been years since her dad died and they’d both moved on and grown… and thinking about him didn’t hurt like it used to, not every time. They could talk about him and remember him with fondness.

That’s why that night as she and Raven wind their way around the dimly lit dance floor when  her heart drops to her stomach as she sees her mother wrapped around someone new she nearly grips Raven’s hand hard enough to break it. She doesn’t really remember the awkward conversation or Raven taking her home - to Raven’s.

They were still new, still feeling out each other’s edges. They’d slept together twice, and only once had Clarke stayed over, but she’d had a class first thing and they’d had no time in the morning to process together. Instead Clarke showered and borrowed clothes from Raven and spent the whole day distracted and smelling Raven on herself. So when Clarke blinks and looks up she realizes she’s sitting on Raven’s couch with a glass of water in her hands. 

Raven hasn’t pushed her, just brought her to her house, tried to help her sober up.

She finishes the glass of water in her hands and sets it on the table. Raven sits next to her, hand lightly on the small of her back. Clarke takes a deep breath in her forearms pressed to her thighs. As she lets it out her head falls forward and she closes her eyes. “He died when I was still in high school. She hasn’t been with anyone since, not that I know of.”

Clarke shakes her head and runs her hands through her hair, taking it down from the messy bun it was in. She breathes against Raven’s hand and everything starts tumbling out, all the heartbreak she doesn’t talk about, the parts she tries to forget. “We used to go to the market on the weekends at sun up and buy groceries. It was our time, just the two of us. I could tell him anything.” The tears are there and the memories hurt. His smile, the way he protected her and supported her, the way he made her feel like she could do anything she wanted. Her father had been her safety. “We were fighting that week. School was too much. Exams and softball and art club and my best friend flipped out when I told her I was bi. I was angry at everyone.

“He died with me mad at him.” Clarke leans over and presses her head to Raven’s knee. Raven’s hand moves to her shoulder. She keeps talking, telling Raven about the next few years and how estranged she and her mother had become, that the relationship was only just really starting to feel repaired. Clearly not enough if she hadn’t mentioned even that she was seeing someone, even vaguely.

She doesn’t mean for the pain and tears and all the fear she’s been holding onto to come spilling out. She and Raven were… new, shiny, breakable. They hadn’t talked about if this were serious or not. It’s started though and she can’t stop it.

Raven rubs her back and runs fingers through her hair and listens. Clarke can’t bring herself to look at Raven, but the small touches, and noises and questions mean she can just keep letting it pour out. 

At the end she’s cried out. It’s well past midnight, and she’s something akin to sober. Clarke sits up, sniffling and rubbing at her face. She leans over and kisses Raven softly. “Thank you. I know this isn’t what you planned to do tonight.”

Raven catches her hand as she stands up. “I planned to spend the night with you.” Raven stands and tugs on Clarke’s hand to get her to turn around. “To get to know you.” She smiles and Clarke lets herself be pulled close. The ache in her heart eases as Raven’s arms wrap around her. “And so maybe I had other plans about what that might mean…”

“What, you weren’t planning on consoling your mess of a…” Clarke pauses, the word catches in her throat. She doesn’t want to say it and have it get taken away, not after the barrage of emotions that have run through her tonight. She meets Raven’s gaze for a second but looks away, too afraid

“You must be tired,” Raven laughs softly. “I think the word you’re looking for is girlfriend.”

“Very tired,” Clarke whispers. She pinches Raven’s shirt between her thumb and forefinger and tugs gently.

“Do you want to stay?” 

Clarke nods and leans gently against Raven, careful not to give her too much of her weight.

“Come on then, sleepyhead.” Raven teases even as she yawns herself.

Clarke follows Raven down the dark hallway and into her bedroom. When Raven hands her a shirt and shorts to sleep in she stands for a moment debating if she should just change or if she should go. She feels like she’s in shock, emotionally drained. Her reaction times are slowed.

“Bathroom’s across the hall. The toothbrush you used last time is still there.” Raven gives her a nudge. Clarke leans in for a quick kiss and nearly flees across the hall. Getting ready for bed is a blur. Warm water on her face, mint toothpaste that is familiar and strange all at once. The shirt smells like Raven. She doesn’t bother with the shorts. Her heart beats too fast.

Raven steps into the hall, already changed as Clarke steps out of the bright bathroom and into the dark. “Go ahead and get in bed, I’ll be there in a minute.”

She takes a deep breath and pads across Raven’s room. The bed is soft and already turned down. She slips between the sheets and scoots to the far side against the wall. She’s exhausted and anxious and doesn’t know how she should wait, if she should wait up. She doesn’t have time to figure out anything before Raven slips in behind her.

Clarke turns over, searching out Raven’s face in the dark. Her hands settle around Raven’s waist and they scoot closer together until their knees knock together. Raven brings up a hand to gently cup Clarke’s cheek. There’s something warm and comforting about it, like safety… and home.

Lying there with Raven in the dark, soft, quiet, watching, trusting… she feels a sense of home and belonging.

It’s been a long time coming. She isn’t sure she’s ready, but she doesn’t want to run.

Leaning forward she presses her lips gently to Raven’s. It’s soft, delicate even, not pushing for more in that moment or the next, just being together. Raw and open and needing, but together.

“Girlfriend, huh?” Clarke whispers with a hint of amusement. “We’re going to have to talk about that in the morning.”

“I thought it was about time,” Raven pecks Clarke on the lips. “Sleep now.”

Clarke nuzzles closer and lets herself drift off. Tonight might not have been what they planned, but it’s what they needed. As their breathing syncs she feels that ease wash over her again. Peace, home, and the brightness that is Raven Reyes.


	24. Anya/Clarke/Lexa | anya didn't die!au pt 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: when it snows

Six days since the rescue at Mount Weather. Five days since they buried their date that were too numerous to count - sixteen  _ skaikru _ and thirty four grounders - it’s Lexa’s job to carry their deaths, to remember them. She knows each of their names and their faces though she never met most of the  _ skaikru _ who fell in the skirmish.

Four days since the survivors left for Polis.

Three days since Clarke agreed to talk to her people about joining the coalition - though Lexa knows they have little choice. Either they join and remain under Lexa’s protection, or they stand their ground as invaders and there’s nothing Lexa can do to stop the warring of the clans to extend to the remaining  _ Skaikru. _

It’s been an hour since she woke up in the pre-dawn light, unable to fall back asleep despite the warmth in her bed and the softness of the women on either side of her, pressed close and holding her gently.

She watches the sun rise as she runs her fingers through Anya’s hair. Today she has nothing to do, no meetings to hold, no people to attend to, today is a day of celebration and aside from attending the ceremony that night she has no requirements. And yet she cannot sleep. 

Outside the world is soft and quiet and she can just make out the snow piled thick on her balcony.

Clarke wakes nest, lips pressing to Lexa’s spine just below the mark of the commander on her neck. Lexa shivers. While they’ve been sharing a bed for more than a month the physical intimacy is new. Lexa and Anya had kept each other safe and comforted for many years. It was unusual for a second to take comfort with their mentor, but she and Anya had always been different: Lexa not that much younger than Anya, tapped early as the leader in her contingent of  _ Natblida _ . They had always been physically close in private. Even then it had taken Clarke falling from the sky until they allowed themselves to be anything more.

Lexa rolls over and snuggles against Clarke, kissing her sleepily goodmorning.

Clarke is cold and calculating and yet she wears her heart on her sleeve even if she pretends she doesn’t. Lexa knows it’s Clarke that awakened in her the need to push past her fear of loss, of what history dictates a  _ Heda _ should be. She kisses Clarke and knows that she will never be like her predecessors. There’s too much wonder and beauty in the world to turn her back on it.

“It’s snowing.” Lexa whispers softly when Clarke pulls away, clear blue eyes fluttering open and coming into focus.

“Snow?” Clarke asks sleepily.

“Soft white froze water that falls from the sky.” Lexa explains with a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.

Clarke shoves her in the shoulder playfully. “I know what snow is, Lexa, I’ve just never  _ seen _ it.”

“Well, there’s a lot of it, and it is quite cold.”

Clarke slips from the bed quickly, hopping from rug to rug to keep her feet from the cold stone as she makes her way toward the balcony. Lexa watches her go, laughing to herself as Clarke doesn’t even bother grabbing clothes, just makes her way across the bedroom in her underwear. Lexa rolls over and wraps her arm around Anya, pressing a line of kisses up her spine. Anya groans in response but settles back into Lexa.

“Morning my sweet warrior,” Lexa whispers.

“Morning,” Anya croaks out, her voice thick with sleep. She rolls over and curls into Lexa, reaching across her to Clarke. “Where is she?”

“There’s snow-” Lexa barely has time to respond before a yelp from Clarke cuts through their conversation.

“It’s  _ freezing _ , Lexa,” Clarke practically yells back into the room from where she’s standing on the balcony knee deep in snow.

“I  _ did _ warn you,” Lexa chuckles.

“Clarke,” Anya sits up as she calls out. She clutches the furs to her chest as the cool air hits her skin. “You’ll get frostbite like that.”

“It’s amazing though Anya!” Clarke scoops up some of the powdery snow and tosses it up in the air, giggling as it floats down in flurries. “I want to see what the city looks like today.”

Anya collapses back against the bed and tosses an arm across her eyes, “White, it looks very white.”

“Clarke, come back to bed and warm up, after breakfast we will dress for the weather and go outside.” Lexa calls, when Clarke turns she holds out her hand, thankful that Clarke steps back into their room and closes the balcony drapes once more. She sighs contentedly watching Clarke walk back across the room, nipples perked from the cold, and skin flushed. Quiet mornings are not something she gets often, and she knows before long they’ll have to leave this moment. They all have duties and responsibilities, and people who don’t know the bond they all share. She breathes it all in and lets it settle in her heart.

Clarke slides into the bed on Anya’s side, and Anya yelps as Clarke’s cold body comes in contact with her. 

“Clarke, no, go to Lexa, she called you back.” Anya squirms, but she’s laughing as Clarke peppers her with kisses.

Clarke shakes her head and wraps herself more firmly around Anya, “Nope, you’re warmer than she is.”

Lexa tugs at Clarke, “Between us.”

Clarke happily shifts, a gleam in her eye, and presses her ice cold feet directly against Lexa’s bare skin.

Lexa chirps in surprise and tries to frown at Clarke but all she can manage is a smile that she can’t control. “You know, this means war.”

“Oh no,” Anya groans.

“War?” Clarke asks, she turns and sets her teeth against Anya’s shoulder. “What does she mean, war?”

Lexa laughs softly. “Snowball fight, of course. You have until just before the lunch hour to assemble your teams. The Natblida will be with me.”

“Claiming Aden doesn’t mean you’re going to win,  _ Heda _ .” Anya says with more conviction and sass than Clarke has ever heard.

“It doesn’t now?” Lexa fires back.

Clarke burrows down between them both. “Warm first, and telling me exactly what your rules are for snowball fights. I have an idea of  _ what _ but, I have a distinct disadvantage.”

Lexa wraps herself around Clarke and presses closer so she can reach for Anya as well. Her mind may still be heavy with everything she is and must be to everyone else, but at least here, in their bed, she is only theirs.


	25. Anya/Luna/Raven | land sea sky pt 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: someone's greatest fear
> 
> _bear with me, I know what it looks like, but things are not as they seem, promise_

 

It hits like a knife through her chest and Luna’s knees hit the ground. Raven reaches for her but she’s in her own hell.

A fairly routine skirmish on the edge of the coalition borders resulted in heavy losses for both sides. Anya’s warriors had limped back to Polis. The first wave arrived a week later than expected, Anya, nor word of her, nowhere in sight. All anyone could say was that they hadn’t seen her body amongst the dead.

This is the moment that Luna has feared since she was young, the reason that, despite the pull she felt, that she would never let herself be with Anya. The moment Anya is hers and doesn’t come back from battle is the moment she loses everything. This has always been her greatest fear.

Raven is screaming beside her, still standing. Luna looks up at her through blurry tear filled eyes. She is wild and feral like Luna has seen her few times before. She knows whatever the  _ tek _ did to Raven’s brain has left her with a rage that burns her up if it isn’t soothed. 

“You  _ left  _ her out there? You don’t  _ know _ if she’s alive or…” Raven chokes on the word, even in her anger, she can’t bring herself to say it. “She’s your general, your  _ Heda’s _ second in command.” She stalks forward ready to grab for the lone warrior making the report to Lexa.

“Raven,” Lexa says cooly.

Raven doesn’t stop. “There are bodies out there that deserve a warrior’s funeral pyre. Anya deserves better than to be left behind, alive or…” She catches up the front of the warrior’s tunic. He almost flinches, but Raven is smaller than him and the brace on her leg makes her slower and weaker, and without her bombs and  _ tek _ she isn’t much of a threat. It only fuels her rage, and that is what makes him flinch.

“Raven,” Lexa warns.

Raven lets him go with a shove.

Luna picks herself up off the floor. She eyes the others warily. Clarke hovers halfway between Lexa’s throne and Raven, watching them both. Her own ambassador is on his feet, slowly making his way to her. The others, almost friends, acquaintances, no one that needs to see this moment. It’s far too intimate. She swallows thickly and tries to push down the storm building inside her.

She reaches for Raven, knowing that Raven needs someone to bring her back from the edge, that even if she wants to she can’t fight it when she’s this far into the pain of the anger. No matter how hard she tries she needs help, and Luna has always been the one to help coax her back. She wraps her arms around Raven, intending to whisper to her and take her to the ground. Hold her tight until the struggle is over.

“Raven, repeat with me,” Luna starts the phrase. “ _ Ai giv ai op…” _

Raven struggles and breaks out of Luna’s grasp, hits at her, fists and nails trying to claw her way out. Something she hasn’t tried to do in a long time, the word no dripping from her mouth like a litany and a curse. Luna grabs for Raven and she whips around. The room around them freezes, waiting to see what happens. 

Luna’s shattered heart breaks as Raven pulls away from her.

“Please,  _ Raven _ .” Luna’s voice shakes.

Raven pulls but doesn’t let go, she shoves at Luna, but doesn’t distance herself. “No!” Raven screams the word and it’s echo is deafening. “How can you be so calm? They  _ left _ her out there. They  _ failed _ her.  _ They _ don’t deserve our silence. She’s gone, Luna. She’s  _ gone _ .”

“You think I don’t know that?” Luna snaps. “You think I haven’t imagined this very day a thousand times over, that  _ this  _ is why I never let myself love her, until  _ you _ . You came along and everything got turned upside down.” She snatches her hand out of Raven’s and reaches for the rings on her left, one for each of them, rough cut natural gemstones, rings they exchanged on their binding day. She slips them off, fire burning in her chest like it hasn’t in years. The sea had calmed her and now there was nothing left but the storm.

She holds out a fist, the rings inside, and pries Raven’s fingers open to drop them into her hand, ignoring the shocked, hurt look on her wife’s face.

“Hold these for me, because I can’t right now.” Luna turns and storms out of Lexa’s throne room.

“Luna!” It’s Lexa that calls to her. She only hesitates for a moment, knowing that while Lexa is her  _ Heda _ in this moment she knows Lexa is calling out as her friend. Her only friend that survived from childhood. The doors slam behind her. 

The weight of Anya’s likely death presses down on her. It feels like she’s drowning and her feet take her toward the sea. She brushes through the tower and the city, not seeing anyone as she passes them. Once or twice she hears her name and she continues on. There would be no stopping even if she wanted, and by the time she hits the edge of Polis she’s running.

The water is cold around her ankles. It’s early spring and the is out but it doesn’t warm anything yet, the flowers only just beginning to bloom. She tears at her top and tosses it to the ground behind her not caring if it hits the beach or not. Her pants go next. All her clothes until she’s standing naked in the freezing ocean. She screams as she walks into the water and falls to her knees, letting the waves crash over her.

She lets the ocean take her, hold her, beat the feeling from her until she is as numb outside as she is inside. The cold steals away the breaking of her heart, and all she can feel is the weightlessness as the sea carries her out. She closes her eyes, her lungs burning. Her hand, most of all, feels naked and light.

It comes back then, as if this pain is too great for the ocean to wash away. Her body is on fire by the time she breaches the surface. She gasps for air and coughs out water. The tide has carried her far from shore and she has to swim back against it.

Bone weary and heartsore she washes up in the beach. She lays down in the sand there and waits, cradling her left hand in her right, knowing she may have broken the one thing in her life that would keep her afloat.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Raven goes silent as Luna leaves.

The rage in her fizzles and dies, still a burning fire in her chest but she can’t breathe so there’s no oxygen to fan the flames. Her hands close around Luna’s rings. One wife more than likely dead and the other… She tightens her grip on the rings until the stones cut into her palm. Even when she feels blood drip down the edge of her hand she doesn’t lessen her hold.

Anya is…  _ dead. _ The word crashes into her chest like a blow and she stumbles to her knees. 

Luna walked out.

The rage coursing in her veins shifts, the energy no less intense and it steals her breath. She knows she needs to leave, to get to her room, away from the prying eyes. Public is nowhere to have a breakdown, not when the politics keeping them safe are a delicate balance of showmanship and appearance. She is one of the pillars of strength that Lexa draws on - the reason the grounders have started to shift their reverence of technology from fear to awe. Her people rely on her to keep them useful.

She sits back on her heels, despite the protestation in her leg. One deep breath at a time. She can do anything for the thirty seconds it will take her to get to her feet and out the door. When Clarke appears, hovering at her side she shakes her head no and finds her way to her feet.

She’ll regret it in the morning but the ache in her body is nothing compared to the pain where her heart was. Tears still drying on her face Raven turns and dips her head to Lexa, “ _ Heda _ .”

Lexa nods, dismissing her. Raven catches the way she glances to Clarke and back to Raven once more, Clarke shifting her head. She isn’t surprised when Clarke follows after her as she leaves the throne room. Her exit is much quieter than Luna’s but no less attention is paid. She can feel every eye in the room on her.

In the quiet of the hallway Clarke takes her hand and Raven sniffles and chokes and holds back a sob. When the war ended and they settled in Polis she thought that the Earth might have given up fighting the  _ Skaikru _ , but it was just playing the long game, determined to break them before the end.

Raven loses time walking back to her quarters that she shares - shared with Anya and Luna. Everything is as it was that morning when they thought Anya still alive.

Raven stands in the middle of their sitting room and looks around feeling like she doesn’t belong.

Clarke hovers nearby, clearly uncertain on how best she can help. “We don’t know for certain that she’s dead.”

Raven turns red rimmed and watery eyes to her and slowly opens her hand to reveal a bloody mess of binding rings. “Not certain it matters.”

“Raven…” Clarke says her name softly asking her not to give up. She wraps her arms around Raven but Raven can’t get herself to respond, she barely even leans into the embrace. Her body feels numb and empty and hollow as if she felt too much as so all her emotions erupted out and now she’s left hollow. There’s no point in hoping because that which she held close and precious has been ripped from her.

Clarke tries for a while to get her to soften, relax, but Raven feels too far away to even begin to respond. After a time Clarke moves her to sit down on the couch, moving Raven as if she’s a small child half asleep and afraid in the night. She doesn’t speak just guides her gently. Raven lets her.

She lets her wash and bandage her hands. The bloody rings sit on the table and neither of them touch them.

The sun begins to set and Luna doesn’t return.

“Send for me if you need anything,” Clarke says softly leaning over to kiss Raven on her forehead. “I’ll be back to check on you before bed.”

Raven glances up at Clarke but can’t bring herself to speak or even nod her head. She’s heavy and empty all at once. Clarke leaves and the room is silent except for the beating of her heart. It feels strange that it’s still there since she’s certain hers has been ripped from her chest.

A minute later, or maybe an hour, she isn’t certain, she reaches out and picks up the rings from the table to cradle them gently in her bandaged hand. Her back screams with the movement but she doesn’t shift, just lets the pain burn through her nerves. It’s something, she’s alive, but even that fades into numbness as the room fades into dark with the setting sun.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Luna flinches when she runs into Clarke in the hallway of the Polis tower. She’s been keeping to the shadows as she makes her way back through town. The last thing she wants is to run into anyone, to talk about what happened and her very public heartbreak.

She understands why Clarke is cross-armed and clench-jawed and terse. It doesn’t make it easier to take. She lost Anya too. She lost Anya in the one way she’s been fearing since she knew she was in love more than a decade ago.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Clarke blocks Luna’s attempt to walk around her.

“Mourning.” Luna shrugs slightly and her shirt crinkles with it, caked with drying sea salt.

“Did you think about what your little fit did to Raven?”

“Did she think about what hers did to me?” Luna snaps back.

“I’m going to let that go this once because Anya is missing.” Clarke takes a step closer and reaches out to rest her hand on Luna’s shoulder but Luna shies away from the touch. Clarke nods and drops her gaze along with her hand.

“She isn’t missing, Clarke, she’s  _ dead _ .” Luna’s voice trembles.

Clarke looks up and her smile is sad, “We don’t know that yet.”

Luna shakes her head and pushes past Clarke who doesn’t try to stop her. “Then where is she?”

Clarke’s voice is small and tired, “Please go be with your wife, Luna, she needs you. Raven needs you right now.”

That cuts through Luna’s anger and she swallows down the bitter rebuke waiting on the back of her tongue. She’ll go, but she doubts that Raven wants her there at all.

The room is dark when she enters, not a single candle is lit. She leaves the door ajar and fetches one from the hallway. Slowly she makes her way around the one, lighting the candles one by one. Halfway through she makes out Raven’s still form on the couch, sitting hunched, head hanging down, forearms pressed to her thighs. When Raven doesn’t acknowledge her she steps from the room once again to call for handmaidens to draw a bath and light a fire. After the ocean she hasn’t warmed and she doesn’t want the ice to take hold of her heart.

She wants the soft warmth that Raven and Anya had given her, even if it hurts.

Luna kneels down in front of Raven and is met with glossy eyes and unshed tears. Raven barely turns to acknowledge her. She reaches for Raven’s hand but Raven doesn’t move. When she tries to open Raven’s hand to press theirs together Raven is pliant but she doesn’t move on her own, as if she’s just gone.

“My love,” she whispers, tears stinging her eyes. She presses her lips to Raven’s knee and it breaks her heart when Raven’s gaze barely even flicks in her direction. “I need you here.”

“You left,” Raven’s voice cracks. Her hand tightens around the rings.

Luna sits up onto her knees and presses her forehead to Raven’s even though she’s at an awkward angle. “I… I shouldn’t have left  _ you _ .” She needed the sea but she shouldn’t have left Raven behind. “I still need you, want you, now more than ever. If I lost you…” Luna trembles and she lets Raven feel it. Even though she hates the weakness, she needs Raven to know exactly how she feels right now. “I’m afraid I already have.”

Raven grips the rings in her fist tighter and shakes her head softly against Luna’s, “You haven’t,” and then again after a few moments. “You smell like the ocean.”

“Come bathe with me?” Luna tries to smile through watery tears.

“How do we do this?” Raven asks. “Without… without  _ her _ ?”

Luna tilts her head and presses a ghost of a kiss against Raven’s lips. “I don’t know exactly, but I think the answer is together.”

Raven nods, her nose brushing against Luna’s and Luna feels hot wet tears on her cheeks that are not her own. “Help me up?”

Luna has to take more of Raven’s weight than she’s had to in a long time. Raven’s back having seized up, she almost swoops Raven up to carry her, instead of making her take the small painful steps to their bathing chamber, but that was something Anya did. There had been an understanding between Raven and Anya when it came to her physical limitations. Luna slips her arm under Raven’s despite the awkward height difference and wraps it around her waist. As it is, when she straightens, she’s half carrying Raven anyway.

The bath is drawn and warm and the room empty. Luna strips first with Raven watching. Her clothes are stiff with seawater and her hair flakes sea salt as she moves. Raven’s gaze is intent, somehow longing and soft and needing all at once. Luna helps her undress noting the blood that stains most of the pieces, and the reddish bandage on her hand. She leaves that for last, the two of them naked and shivering in the night air.

Raven shakes her head and pulls her hand to her chest.

Luna drops her hands and helps Raven into the bath instead. They overflow the tub, making a mess of the floor, Luna having forgotten to specify that two of them would be bathing. The water is hot on her skin and it feels a little like coming alive again after drowning - painful and sharp but there’s an edge of relief to it.

Luna pulls Raven to her and just holds her for a moment before dunking them both underneath the surface of the water. It’s Raven that holds them there in the silent cocoon of warmth, only signalling to resurface when both their lungs burn. Luna curls forward around Raven and holds onto too tightly.

The tears come then, heaving sobs, both of them breaking as they hold on tight. Raven’s fingernails dig into Luna’s arms and she doesn’t protest the pain. 

Their tears last until the water runs cold.

Still, they hold each other in the bath water, not wanting to move away from each other quite yet. 

Luna reaches for Raven’s left hand, the bandaged one, and slowly opens it. Finding her rings there cracks her just that much more. 

Gently, she dips Raven’s hand beneath the water, removing the bloody bandage and gently cleans both the rings and Raven’s hand. Tears stream down her face and she hopes Raven can’t feel them on her shoulder. Luna presses her lips to the back of Raven’s neck, and stays there, sobbing and shaking silently. Knowing it was useless to try to hold this in.

She could live a hundred years and she fears her biggest regret will have been taking off those rings when she did. She could spend a lifetime trying to make up for her decision and never be worth the love that she might receive. 

Raven’s body shakes with tears, and by the time they’re both done crying the second time, they’re shivering with cold. She watches as Raven takes her left hand tracing her fingers and kissing the palm. 

“Can I wear them again?” Luna asks softly, breaking the silence with words for the first time since they sank into the bath. She continues, uncertain, “Only if you want…”

Raven half turns and presses a kiss to the corner of Luna’s mouth as she slips the rings back on her fingers. “I want.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Anya is sore and stiff and in dire need of a bath when she stumbles through the gates of Polis one late afternoon. She doesn’t make much fuss, just another warrior coming back from battle, albeit a bit late. She had woken after the battle with a pounding headache and a dislocated shoulder. The former she had sated with water and food, the later she had popped back into place with the help of a boulder.

Her horse had run off and she had walked all the way back to Polis. Tired as she is, she hardly notices the whispers and stares until she’s nearly in Lexa’s throne room.

It doesn’t occur to her that she’s unexpected until Lexa trips over her sash as she stands too quickly from her seated place at her throne. Or the flash of relief in Clarke’s eyes, quickly replaced by cool anger. Several other ambassadors sit around the room, and it’s clear she’s walked into a council meeting. No mind, she has a report to make.

And make it she does, with Lexa staring her down as if she’s trying to believe that Anya is real. She keeps her gaze guarded however, and Anya makes no indication she’s noticed anything amiss at all.

As she turns to leave Lexa practically whispers, “I would advise being careful when you see your wives.”

Anya turns back, one eyebrow raised, but can do nothing but take in Lexa’s indifference and Clarke’s glare.

She opens the door to her living quarters and is met with the shattering of a ceramic bowl.

Luna and Raven are both still dressed for bed though it’s well past midday and neither looks like they’ve slept much more than Anya in the past week. The bowl shattered at Luna’s feet held fruit.

Raven half runs, half hobbles across the space knocking into Anya with such force that they both nearly hit the ground. Anya gently returns the embrace that crushes her ribs and makes her wince in pain. She’s about to tease Raven when she realize that Raven’s body is shaking with sobs, wet hot tears rolling down Anya’s neck where Raven’s face is pressed.

She tightens her grip and threads her hand through Raven’s hair. Anya closes her eyes and breathes in her wife, who smells much like her other wife in that moment. She’s been gone too long, and she’s only realizing that perhaps it’s longer than she thinks.

Raven’s grip doesn’t lessen, nor do her sobs abate. Between breaths she chokes out, “We thought you were gone.”

“I’m right here,” Anya whispers. She looks up, acutely aware that Luna hasn’t joined in.

Luna stands there, pale as a ghost, tears streaming down her face. Her hand covers her mouth and Anya can tell she isn’t quite breathing. The pain in Luna’s eyes is a look she’s seen before someone’s loved one coming back unexpectedly from war.

It hits her then, that she’s not the first of her troupe to return, and they must have reported her missing, or dead. Everything Luna feared. Back before Raven they had argued long about being together, because Luna swore she would never be able to survive losing Anya in battle. Her heart wasn’t built to survive loss. It had taken leaving everything behind to find steady ground after the conclave.

Anya watches Luna watching her hold Raven and her heart breaks.

Everything she promised would never happened became real for Luna.   
Pressing a kiss to Raven’s temple she extracts herself from Raven’s embrace and crosses the room in two short strides. Her shoulder protests as she lifts both her hands to cup Luna’s cheeks but she does so anyway, brushing away tears with her thumbs.

There are tears in her own eyes.

She leans in and kisses Luna, their tears becomming sobs as the soft kiss turns into a hard press that is more a clash of teeth than kiss. “I’m here,” Anya whispers between kisses. “I’m alive. I promise. It’s me.”

Luna throws her arms around Anya who hisses in pain as Luna squeezes her tight. Still she holds her back, just as tight, only letting go to reach behind her for Raven. When Raven joins they slowly sink to the floor holding Anya in the middle, trading kisses and touches, tenderly holding onto each other's broken hearts. 


	26. Anya/Luna/Raven | land sea sky pt 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: when words aren't enough

Anya has been back in Polis for no longer than six hours.

Four of which she has spent curled up in a messy pile with her wives trading gentle touches and soft kisses. Nothing more. Just the three of them on their beating hearts.

Luna had shushed her when she started to explain what had happened. Raven had whispered later and nuzzled into her neck.

Nothing could have prepared her for the two of them to be shell shocked and clinging. There’s a rough hollowness about them as if they lost everything thinking Anya was dead. Never has she seen Luna so distraught, even after the conclave, when she had been devastated and beaten down, there had been a connectedness about her, a sense of purpose and drive - even if that drive was to get as far away from Polis as she could

The way Luna digs her fingertips into Anya’s skin is full of confusion, pain, and relief that plagues her all at once. At first she had clung to Anya, broken wide, huge sobs that robbed her of her breath shaking her to her core. Her worst nightmares had become her waking reality and she couldn’t escape, even in Raven’s arms. 

Neither has stopped touching Anya, even as they moved from the floor to the bath room. Raven heated the water. Luna stripped Anya of her travel stained clothes, wrinkling her nose as she drops the stiff, stained garments to the side. The movement of her hands is reverent, soft and delicate as if she’s rememorizing every line of Anya’s body.

Luna pushes Anya toward the bath, gentle pressure against her hips. Her gaze flicks from the old scar on Anya’s stomach to the faded purplish bruise that is her shoulder. She avoids looking at her face. To see Anya looking at her with an equal mix of curiosity and pain is almost more than she can take. 

She still doesn’t believe that Anya is real and back, that this isn’t some hallucination of her mind, finally broken completely, that she isn’t laying in bed wrapped up with Raven in a fever dream.

Raven helps Anya into the tub and leans over to kiss her shoulder, then the spot just above her ear. She has no words for what she’s feeling. Gratitude, relief, fear, and most of all understanding. This is why Luna held back all those years. She spins her rings idly as she sits on the edge of the tub to steady herself as she strips and takes off her brace.

When Raven’s back is bare Anya reaches up to trace the starburst scar that puckers at a her low back where she had been shot. The skin is rough underneath her fingers and she knows that Raven hasn’t been taking care of herself - the salve that Abby devised with Nyko has gone unused since she left. She squeezes Raven’s side and breathes out.

She pulls Raven’s hand to her mouth and kisses the palm, and the scab there that is starting to scar. Neither Raven nor Luna have told her what happened when she was gone other than they thought she had died. Right now she lets it go, all she wants is to chase the ghosts from her girls’ eyes.

Raven doesn’t turn or move as Anya presses her lips to her palm or her knuckles. Even a gentle press of teeth around the meat of her thumb elicits no response. 

Anya glances up at Luna who has stripped and is sitting on the other edge of the tub looking down at Anya. With the raise of an eyebrow she tries to ask all the things she’s afraid to say outloud in that moment. Luna drops her head and shakes it. Don’t push her right now, let Raven come back to us on her own time.

Truth is, over the past few days Luna had watched Raven slip in and out of herself. She would be going along as fine as she could be, given what they believed, and then she would be gone, staring off into the distance. Pulling her from it only ended in tears or anger. Luna would stay close by or pull Raven to her but she would wait, and wait, and hope that Raven would come back to her.

Luna reaches out, her hand fitting over Anya’s, fingertips brushing the same path. Raven twitches, she almost turns, it’s almost the illusion of movement.

Luna sighs heavily and reaches for the washcloths just next to Raven. She scrubs at the bar of soap and dunks the cloth into the already murky water. Anya’s skin is reddish and sun kissed underneath the layer of dirt that Luna wipes away. Soft but firm swipes of her hand. She scoots closer as she cleans Anya’s face and neck. She hands Anya the cloth to continue the process and nudges at her to dunk her head and wet her hair.

She works on the mess of Anya’s hair, working out mats with her fingers and a comb as much as she can while Anya continues to wash. Her fingers meet resistance as she combs them through the mess of blonde but with a few applications of soap and oil she can run her fingers through with relative ease.

The water is dark.

Raven is still silent.

Anya empties the tub, Luna brings freshly warmed water for her to rinse with, then again to fill the tub once more. She keeps her focus on the task at hand, make sure Anya gets clean, don’t disturb Raven. Get rid of the mats, change the water. 

She sits down on the edge, a fresh washcloth and soap in her hands. Luna leans forward and places the softest of kisses to Anya’s lips tears clinging to her lashes.

“Luna,” Anya whispers as she lifts Luna’s chin with her forefinger. 

It’s the first time their eyes have met since Luna crashed in Anya’s arms. She can’t bring herself to look away because she’s captivated in Anya’s gaze. Her jaw trembles and her throat tightens so much she’s afraid she won’t breathe. Anya has been underneath her hands since she walked back in, somehow miraculously alive. It still doesn’t feel real. 

Tears spill down her cheeks and Anya brushes them away as she cradles Luna’s face. 

Anya reaches out and lays a hand on Raven’s thigh. She squeezes gently and waits. One hand cradling Luna’s face, the other resting gently on Raven’s thigh. She waits to feel like they are both with her again.

Luna slips into the oversized tub between Anya’s legs. She reaches up a hand and mirrors Anya’s touch.

Raven shakes her head. It’s too much having them both again and wondering if she fits here anymore or if she’s just getting between them. Luna had left. Anya had been dead and Luna had left, and now that Anya was back Raven can’t help but see that Luna is going to be okay. Alone, just the two of them, they had been shaky and she had been afraid for them both. With Anya alive though, so is Luna, even as she works through her pain.

The joy of having Anya back is still there. She wouldn’t change that reality for anything, but there’s a deep unsettled feeling in her that she can’t shake. An insidious voice that tells her they don’t need her.

Hands on her back and a gentle pressure on her thighs are all the warning she gets before they both lower her back gently into the water. It’s almost scalding against her skin, cold as she’s become from sitting naked on the edge. Her back aches with the change in position and she whimpers in pain. She feels hands reaching to massage the muscles that are always sore. Anya cradles Raven to her chest and Luna swings her legs into the tub.

The tub is barely large enough for the three of them to rest comfortably, two of them, yes, but they usually find a way, jostling for position as they wash each other.

This isn’t about getting clean.

This is about the water reminding them they’re alive, that stripped down, with nothing between them they’re still strong and solid. 

Anya picks up Raven’s left hand and kisses the palm, then does the same to Luna. Their fingers twine, Anya’s hand behind Raven’s, Luna’s hand in front. Fingers stretch and flex, and the cut of the gems presses into the delicate flesh. 

Raven turns into a kiss Luna means for her cheek. Catches her lips and half sighs, half cries into it. Luna presses her forehead to Raven’s even as she pulls Anya closer until her head rests with theirs.

There aren’t words for what passes between them. Tears falling hands clasped tightly and holding each other close. There’s a second chance that they’ve been given that doesn’t feel like it’s something they would ever be given.

They had had so much happiness, in light of the world that they lived in, it almost felt unfair, and now, to be reunited, given another chance to live their lives together feels as if they’ve been given a gift. If only they can hold onto it, if only they can hold onto it, this moment, pressed together skin tight is heavy and light all at once.

There isn’t enough room for the three of them in the couple sized tub, but they make it work, legs and arms tangled together, shoulders bumping and necks at odd angles. None of them are ready to move, not even to bed, because what if they move and it’s all a dream.

The water quickly grows tepid, and Anya’s legs start to fall asleep, cradling them both against her at odd angles. 

It’s Luna that coaxes them from the water.

Anya that wraps them in towels.

And Raven, from where she is firmly wrapped around Luna’s neck, that guides them to bed without a word.


	27. Anya/Luna/Raven | land sea sky pt 5

Raven knows she’s pulling away.

Part of her died when Luna pressed their bonding rings into her hand.

Another part withered when she realized that Luna had been ready to let herself die if the sea willed it.

Watching the two greatest joys of her life together had once given her peace and a sense of belonging, now she wonders if it was only ever a delusion she had.

So Raven knows she’s pulling away but she doesn’t know how to stop it and she doesn’t know how much is real and how much is in her head.

She wants to go back to before, back before they thought Anya had been killed, back before her heart had shattered, back before she flinched when they touched her. Each day she grows more distant even though she tries to pretend she isn’t.

Lexa had asked her to work on a way for Polis to generate electricity and she threw herself into the project, blaming the long hours, late nights, and early mornings on being the  _ Heda’s Tek _ Advisor. While Luna and Anya spent quiet time in the gardens or by the sea, Raven worked until her fingers bled.

If she could just get past this feeling everything would go back to normal.

* * *

Anya catches Raven as she slips out of the bath room and heads toward the door, her hair is damp from bathing and she’s barely slept at all, the sun barely kissing the horizon when she slips from bed each morning. Her fingers wrap around Raven’s forearm easily and she tugs her back when Raven throws a hurried  _ I’ll see you later _ over her shoulder.

She clenches her teeth together and stares Raven down as Raven turns reluctantly, looking up at her with an annoyed slant. Her jaw is offset, and her hands on her hips, one pressed to the side. Raven narrows her eyes and glances down at the hand still holding her.

“I’m  _ late _ .” Raven snaps.

Anya takes in a deep breath and lets it out as slowly as she dares as she lets Raven go knowing that Luna would applaud her not snapping back.

It doesn’t last long.

“No one else is awake yet, your work can wait.” Raven has barely had a single meal with them since Anya returned.

“Our  _ heda _ wants this finished before summer ends.”

“You can take  _ one _ morning off.” Anya fumes. “It’s not like Lexa leaves her bed before the sun anymore.” She just wants one morning with the three of them that isn’t filled with the press of responsibility. A long lay in bed, berries and dried meats for breakfast just before noonday. Soft quiet moments dotted with laughter and conversation.

“I suppose she’s too busy fucking Clarke to get up at a decent hour of the day.” Raven spits, and it’s clear from the look on her face that she isn’t quite sure why she says what she did.

“You could be too!” Anya pinches the bridge of her nose. “Fucking us, not Clarke,” she waves a hand dismissively at the awkwardness of the misstep.

Raven stands there with her arms crossed but she hasn’t left and that alone feels like a small triumph. Anya bites the inside of her cheek to keep from staring Raven down. This isn’t the first time she’s faced off with her, asked her to stay, only to watch Raven walk out that door. Something happened in that week that they thought she was dead that neither Raven nor Luna will talk about, and it’s infuriating. One wife acts as if nothing happened, and the other as if everything did.

“What I’m saying is, maybe if you took the edge off and relaxed you could figure out the problem with the turbines,” Anya lets out half of a heavy sigh and swallows down the rest. 

Raven shakes her head and turns to leave. She has the door half open when Anya finds the strength to ask the question she’s afraid to hear the answer to.

“What happened?” asks quietly. “When I was gone, what happened between you and Luna?”

Raven’s shoulders slump and her head drops but she doesn’t move, doesn’t turn. She shakes, silently crying, anger and walls built high crashing to nothing in zero seconds. Raven presses her forehead to the edge of the door and Anya watches in shock for a moment as the pain tears across Raven’s features in a silent scream. Fat tears dripping from her eyes, Raven looks to the rings on her left hand, and turns the gem of one around her finger. The rings sit there loosely.

Anya takes half a step forward.

Raven shakes her head and looks away.

“Raven,” Anya whispers.

Raven turns and crashes into Anya’s half open arms. No answers, just tears and a desperate, bruising grip. Anya returns it, pressing her face to Raven’s still damp hair. She holds Raven up as she screams silently, only breathing between long drawn out sobs. She doesn’t ask again, afraid even moreso now of the answer. This is only confirmation that something did happen.

* * *

When Luna comes back from training with the  _ natblida _ she expects to find Anya waiting for her with open arms ready for their afternoon walk to try to cajole Raven from her workshop. It’s not as if they had much luck lately with convincing Raven to join them, but she refused to give up.

Anya is alive, and with them, and she refuses to waste a moment with her. She needs them to be okay, because if she can just make them all okay again she’ll be able to let go of the naked truth she found waiting for her in the sea.

That deep down she doesn’t deserve either of them, and that even one of her wives is more than she has ever earned.

As is customary she feels a fleeting moment of calm having worked on meditation techniques with the noviates for the better part of the last hour. She isn’t prepared for the accusatory tone of her wife’s voice.

“Tell me what happened.”

Luna raises an eyebrow and dips her hand into the bowl of berries on their table. The soft red ones are her favorite but the one she picks is bitter on her tongue.

“When you thought I was dead, what happened?” Anya leans forward, her forearms against her knees and tilts her head to look up at Luna standing above her. “Raven hasn’t been the same.”

Guilt washes over her again and Luna almost falls to her knees. She swallows down the tart berry along with the bile at the back of her throat. It sticks and she wants to turn, find a glass for water, but there’s no tearing herself from the pain in Anya’s eyes.

“Raven is pulling away from us and I don’t understand why.”

It’s the crack in Anya’s voice that breaks Luna.

She falls to her knees and drops her head in shame, “It’s my fault.”

Anya’s voice is cautious, “What do you mean?”

Luna looks up to meet the wary pain that mars Anya’s face. She would give anything if she could take it all back. “When we received word that you hadn’t returned with your warriors Raven and I both broke. Raven was angry like I haven’t seen her since the worst of her injury, volatile and violent, and it took Lexa threatening her to make her step down. She hit me, and nothing we had worked on served to bring her back. I’d lost you, and it felt like I had lost her as well... I snapped, I-” Luna shakes but she won’t look away from Anya, taking the pain and anger as part of the penance she must pay. She should have addressed this sooner, shouldn’t have let it get this bad, but how could she make it up to Raven when Raven would barely look in her direction the more days that passed. “I took off our binding rings and folded them into her hand.”

Anya closes her eyes and turns her head away. “You wear them now,” her voice is cold and even.

Luna nods, more to herself than anyone else and steadies out her breath even as she wants to break down and cry in Anya’s arms. “I walked out into the sea until my lungs burned with the need for air.” She pauses, waiting for Anya to turn back to her but all Anya does is open her eyes and stare out the window. “When I came back Raven was hollow, but we talked and bathed and she allowed me to have my rings back. I thought we would be okay.”

“And then I came back.”

“A few days later, yes.”

Anya snaps her head to look directly at Luna and Luna meets the weight of the stare, refusing to flinch. 

“Fix this,” Anya seethes. She presses up from the chair with a speed Luna hasn’t seen her move with since her return. She takes care to avoid touching Luna as she slips past her but she pauses standing next to her. 

Anya rocks onto the balls of her feet and back onto her heels. Her hand reaches down and rests heavily on Luna’s shoulder.

Luna twists her head and looks up at Anya once more. There are tears in her eyes and her vision is blurry but she’s certain she can see tears on Anya’s cheeks.

“Help Raven see that she’s still needed, and most of all that she’s still loved.”

* * *

Raven sits in the corner of her workshop tucked between the turbine she’s building, an oversized fern and the glass of the greenhouse wall. She looks out over the edge of the city and down to the ocean below.

She wonders if she could do it, walk into the ocean and let it decide.

There’s a certainty in her that tells her Luna and Anya would survive her just fine, but there’s a bitterness that keeps her in her workshop, rooted to the spot, a spite that doesn’t want to grant them that peace.

She’s done nothing today but cry, sending her assistants running with a few sharp words, and none had returned. At one point Clarke had come looking for her, calling out, but she had stayed silent and staring out the window.

Raven knows that Clarke had seen her sitting there and left her alone. It’s easier lately to let her have her space when she’s in a mood. She’s spoiling for a fight, anything to take the pain and insecurity away. If it ever goes away she’ll have bridges to mend, if she hasn’t torched them completely.

“Raven?”

It’s Luna that’s calling for her softly.

Raven shuts her eyes. She can’t look at Luna without feeling the press of Luna’s binding rings into her palm, the way the stones cut through her flesh. She stretches her fingers wide and wills the feeling to go away, hoping that maybe Luna will leave with it.

“Raven.” Luna’s voice is full of concern and sympathy, and in her fragile state Raven chokes on a sob as tears start to fall once more.

She thought she was cried out, too many tears had fallen for her body to make any more, and yet, her she is, softly sobbing once more. Raven curls her knees up to her chest, despite the protest in her left leg, and hides her face.

Luna’s hand trembles as it brushes across Raven’s hair. “My love…” she whispers. “This is my fault.” 

Her tone is soothing and her touch soft and hesitant as if she’s ready to pull back at a moment’s notice.

Raven doesn’t have the words she needs. She wants to snap and yell and say that yes it is Luna’s fault that she feels unneeded. The anger is there, rolling just on the edge of her mind, but she’s afraid of it, and what it makes her do, how it pushes her into that place that she can’t control. The anger and the fear rolling together until her mind cracks open and all that’s left is a primal rage fueled by pain.

Luna is close enough that she can almost feel the air shift with her steady gentle breathing.

She doesn’t know if she wants the calm or the storm and her mind twists with the indecision of it. Because Luna and Anya don’t need her - their bond is stronger than one with Raven ever could be, spanning back years, and a hundred memories she will never have.

Raven cries out and punches the side of her fist against the window. She hits one of the metal frames hard enough to bruise her hand and she screams again.

It hits her like a flash flood. The pain, the despair, the unadulterated anger. It takes her and tucks the Raven that she knows to be herself in a corner of her mind until it feels that all that is left of her is the storm that spills out of her mouth. 

She presses her face to her knees, her left hand tucked underneath her legs and caught between them. If she fights, if she stays still, maybe the episode will pass.

It’s strong enough that she almost doesn’t care if it takes her. She screams incoherently, words that she doesn’t know the meaning of, sentences that she can’t remember the moment she says them but that will float back to her when she’s on the edge of sleep later. She’s almost gone, almost unconscious with the rage. 

Raven screams until her throat feels raw. She punches the side of her fist against the glass wall of the greenhouse again. Her fist connects with glass and it cracks with the force of her blow. There’s a satisfaction that comes with the destruction.

She feels Luna press behind her, wrap her arms around Raven, muscles straining as Raven fights her. The rage has given way to pain and she can’t tell which direction is up and which is down. Her body writhes and fights, she would do anything to make it feel like she wasn’t on fire from head to toe.

Slowly she hears Luna whispering in her ear, at first the sounds mean nothing. She doesn’t know if they’re in English or Trigedasleng. All she knows is that Luna’s breathing is even, even with a hummingbird heart, and that her voice is soft and strong and steady. 

Raven doesn’t know how long she fights until she hears her name and the soft gentle command.

“Repeat after me, come on Raven,  _ ai giv ai op _ .”

“ _ Ai giv ai op _ ,” Raven’s throat is raw and the words burn.

“ _ Gon nemiyon… _ ” 

She feels the tension in Luna’s body ease and Raven makes a conscious decision to draw her next breath. “ _ Gon nemiyon _ ,” she whispers. Raven coughs and her head explodes in a burst of pain. She spits up blood.

“ _ Kom lanik-de _ .”

Her breath is unsteady but she manages the last three words, “ _ Kom lanik-de _ .”

Again. Again. Again.

They repeat the mantra in Trigedasleng until Raven feels wholly in her body once more. They’re both crying softly and Raven reaches for Luna’s hand. As angry as she may be she misses Luna and Anya. As hurt as she is she can’t make herself walk away, she doesn’t have the strength.

Luna presses her lips to Raven’s spine, “I’m sorry my love, my fallen star.”

Raven shakes her head.

“I never meant to make you feel as if my relationship with you meant so little.”

Raven can feel Luna’s tears hot on her back as they soak through her shirt. 

“I have done terrible things in my life, of my own choice, and few will I regret forever, few weigh me down so heavily that I must pick them up each morning and find the strength to get up from bed despite them.”

Luna pulls Raven’s left hand into her own and cradles it there, running the fingertips of her right against the scars that cut across Raven’s palm. Raven shivers at the gentleness of the touch. They haven’t been this close since before Anya came back. 

It feels like a lifetime ago.

“I can’t take what I did back.”

Raven hiccups, a sob chasing it hard, and it feels like her rib cage might break.

Luna pulls her closer and presses a kiss to the line of skin behind her ear. “I can only try to make it up to you if you’ll let me.” Her head falls against Raven’s shoulder, “Please let me.”

Raven wants to. She wants to let it all roll off her, to turn and take Luna in her arms again, but there’s a stubborn streak in her pride. Even with Luna who has seen her fall so far, seen her at her absolute worst, and been on the receiving end of it she doesn’t want to back down on this. Part of her doesn’t want to forgive Luna walking away.

But Luna doesn’t ask a second time; she simply holds Raven.

Raven watches the sun set and the moon rise in Luna’s arms. Her body aches with the stillness of it, only broken by tears, both her own and Luna’s. She almost expects Anya to search them out but the greenhouse stays silent as day turns into night.

“Tell me why.” Raven breaks the silence.

Luna stiffens at the command but Raven feels her straighten up so she can speak without hiding her voice between Raven’s shoulder blades.

Raven misses the warmth.

“Anya was dead and you…”

Raven had had an episode. Pieces of it come back and she cringes as she remembers hitting Luna.

“... I was gone too.”

More than one unforgiveable thing happened that day. The memory of what she thinks happens twists inside her, and she feels the urge to push, to have proof. It’s an itch that she can’t ignore. She should, but she can’t right then as hard as she tries.

“Tell me why you walked into the ocean.”

“Anya…” Luna chokes on the words.

“Say it. Face it. If I have to so do you.” Raven’s hands come to rest over Luna’s and she holds on tight.

“I let the sea decide if I would die of a broken heart.”

“And what did it tell you?”

She feels Luna swallow thickly, “That I may have ruined the one thing that would save me. That with Anya gone, you, and our memories with her, were what mattered the most. That you always mattered so much, and that’s why what I did..” her voice cracks.

Raven lets the admission go unfinished. She’s hurt and angry but there’s a level of cruel she can’t bring herself to.

“But with her here?” Raven turns then to see Luna’s face because this is what has been eating at her, hollowing her out once more.

Luna’s face is puffy from hours of crying, her eyes swollen and parted lips cracked. There’s a stunned awe rounding the corners of her eyes. She grips at Raven’s forearms and moves to her knees to mirror Raven’s position.

“There is no us without you.” Fresh tears slip down Luna’s cheeks. “You’re daft, and selfish, if you think we’ll survive you walking away like you’ve been trying to do.”

“You’re okay though. She came back,  _ and you’re okay _ .”

Luna looks at her stunned. “I’m terrified Lexa will ask her to go out again. That Anya will have to fight in another skirmish and she won’t make it back. I’m trying to stay calm and even for both your sakes, because if I don’t I’m afraid of what I’ll do.”

Raven covers her face with her hands as she pitches forward into Luna’s lap, needing to cry but finding no more tears to be had. Luna’s arms wrap around her and she feels Luna press her cheek to her back.

“For a genius you’re a bit of an idiot.”

Raven hiccups and coughs and laughs all at once. Luna rubs her back. There’s a tension that eases a few threads knowing that Luna is struggling as well.

“Can we go home to our wife now?” Luna asks as she sits up.

Raven rolls onto her side, her head still in Luna’s lap. As she looks up at her wife she pushes at the last niggling bit of doubt. It isn’t gone, but it’s been mollified for the moment. She wants to be held and believe that she is wanted and needed.

She wants to trust Luna again.

Her back and leg are on fire and she doesn’t know if she can walk all the way back to Polis tower. They’ve been hiding in the greenhouse for too many hours, pressed into a cramped corner. 

“I don’t think I can walk all the way.” Raven says softly.

Luna nods and starts to move Raven out of her lap. “I’ll go get Anya.”

“No,” Raven catches her hand and holds on a little tighter than she needs. “I mean.” She sits up and drops her gaze. “If you feel up to helping me…”

Luna tightens her grip on Raven’s hand and pulls her to her feet. Raven stumbles into Luna and wraps her arms around her neck. She’s suddenly too close, face to face, she just wants to fall back into Luna. Her body aches with the love inside her. 

That love feels like a betrayal.

It also feels like everything she needs. Everything except for the twin warmth of Anya’s love.

This is the start, she has to be willing to forgive and accept amends if they’re to find a way forward. She needs Anya and Luna, as much as she wants to be okay on her own, having known their love she will never be the same without it.

She never wants to feel like she did in Lexa’s throne room thinking one wife dead, and the other gone of her own volition.

Raven presses her cheek to Luna’s and whispers in her ear. “Carry me.” She tightens her arms around Luna’s neck.

Luna tucks her hands under Raven’s thighs and lifts her. Raven catches her heels together and settles her weight into Luna. When Anya carries her, it is always cradled sideways, occasionally tossed over her shoulder in gest, but rarely is it this intimate. Though, to Raven, the act of being carried is almost more intimate than if they were pressed together naked in bed.

There’s a vulnerability in allowing someone else to be her legs and keep her safe.

“Is this okay?” Luna asks, wide-eyed.

Raven nods. 

Luna takes a few tentative steps, walking them slowly out to the clear path. Her focus is fixed past Raven’s shoulder. There’s a crease between her eyes that Raven knows to mean Luna’s heart is troubled. The bitter part of her thinks that’s as it should be.

The exhausted, soft, and desperately in love part wins out. “Wait.”

Luna pauses and starts to set Raven down. Raven holds on tighter.

“Don’t put me down.”

Luna raises an eyebrow, but it’s tired and Raven can feel a fine tremor roll through her. 

She couldn’t have told anyone the last time she kissed her wife. Her  _ wife _ she reminds herself. Through good and bad, thick and thin, they make the choice to forgive and grow and stay together. Raven presses her lips to Luna’s. They need Anya, yes, but they need each other.

They only make things work when it’s the three of them.

She feels Luna’s knees buckle, but she manages to catch them before they fall. 

Luna kisses her back. It’s soft and gentle and the promise of forever that she almost believes. When Luna pulls back she looks humbled and beaten as if she never expected Raven to even try to forgive her.

“I need you,” Luna whispers. “Anya needs you.”

“No matter what you can’t leave again, you made a promise on our binding day.” Raven takes Luna’s face in her hands. “You made a promise to Anya and to me.”

Luna turns her head to press a kiss to Raven’s left palm. “I can’t make up for what I did, but I’ll spend as long as you’ll allow me trying to live up to the promises I made.” She takes Raven’s palm gently in her teeth and then kisses it once more. “You are my light in the darkness. You’re what brought me back from the depths of the sea.”

Raven’s heart cracks open as she leans forward to kiss Luna once more. 

Raven might be their guiding light, but it’s Luna that keeps them afloat, and Anya that keeps them steady. Balance only works when they let each other in. Lately Raven’s only been shutting the out.

They have a long journey to get back to how they had been, and they’ll never truly be the same again, but there’s hope there growing between them as Luna takes Raven back to Anya. Each step is the start of the promise that will never be broken again.


	28. Anya/Luna/Raven | neighbors!au pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern!au for land sea sky... [continuation of this aesthetic](http://dreamsheartstory.tumblr.com/post/161444272317/modern-land-sea-sky-neighborsau-aesthetic-raven)

****“Clarke.” Raven says their best friend’s name like a prayer and curse all at once as they stare at the deep blue sky of the summer afternoon above them. Their phone is warm pressed against their ear and the grass beneath their bare shoulders itches.

“That was the gayest text you’ve ever sent me Rae-bae,” Clarke laughs.

Raven can just make out the sound of Lexa in the background on the other end of the line chastising Clarke for not getting to the point and continue to tease Raven when they were clearly in distress over the situation. Lexa’s voice goes soft and Raven can’t quite understand the words that follow. “What does quiet and beautifully terrifying want you to tell me?”

“She wants me to come help you unpack- ow… Lex! - and have a barbeque to meet your new neighbors.”

Raven groans.

“She’s informed me that you have a bad case of gay,” Clarke giggles, “To which I informed her that you are typically the cure for such ailments - but also often the cause - it’s always a little touch and go with that. So if you could just go invite the bra-less queers over and we’ll round up the crew in like forty-five? I don’t think either of the Blakes have plans tonight since the whole sitch had been that we were giving you your space to settle in finally. But it’s been way too long and everyone wants to see you.”

“Clarke,” Raven breathes out. They aren’t ready for this, not the friends, that they’re fine with, even if it has been a few months, it’s the new neighbors. Raven is the last of the college crew to move to the big city. They’ve never been like this - Raven is the confident flirt, the one that gets any person they want. “I have to live here. I can’t-” They can’t start out hitting on their new neighbors the _day_ they move in.

Besides, their two neighbors, correction, neighbor and the lady across the street, are more attractive than they know what to do with. Besides the two are far too into each other to be anything but trouble to Raven.

They’re supposed to be taking time for themselves. That was a big point of this move, finally heal after Finn cheated and broke up with them. Start the new job and say fuck off to what had happened. Hot neighbors had not been part of the plan.

Ridiculously hot neighbors.

There was the willowy one that was ninety-nine percent muscle that had spent much of her day bent over or underneath the Mustang in her driveway. Blonde hair pulled up in a mess of a bun, curly tendrils escaping, tanned skin sunkissed. She looked like a model not a mechanic.

Then there was the one from across the street who had practically skipped out of her house in a sundress and black Doc Marten’s with her hair in a wild mane around her head.

From Raven’s yard they had been able to discern that the little flower punk, who really wasn’t all that little, and probably taller than Raven, had not been wearing a bra. This was made evidently clear when Raven caught her leaning over the engine of the Mustang with the mechanic. A quick check told Raven that the mechanic hadn’t bothered with a bra either.

They’d stood there sorting and folding cardboard for the recycling a little longer than needed surreptitiously watching their new neighbors flirt. That’s about the time they had given in and texted Clarke and collapsed in the front yard.

Raven doesn’t move. They don’t see the point. Of course at some point they’ll introduce themselves and hope the conversation doesn’t get too awkward. There are a hundred reasons why it could. The sun is bright and they close their eyes, settling down in the grass, the itching having dulled to a background inevitability. They tug on their shorts and dig their fingers into the muscle of their right thigh. The brace is itchy and sweaty in the heat but they aren’t quite fussed enough to take it off. Clarke may have said forty-five to get everyone together, but that means that she had already started the group chat and Lexa had assigned people errands, and everyone was en route when she had called Raven.

Which meant Clarke and Lexa would be out the door as soon as they had gotten off the phone.

Raven hadn’t quite clocked the distance from their place to everyone else’s but they knew it wasn’t far - at most opposite sides of the same neighborhood. It would be a good walk on a decent day if they were feeling up to it.

The sound of a car engine idling and shutting off draws out a groan from them. Two car doors open and shut, and then a third slightly slower.

Raven stays there in the grass with their arm tossed across their face to blot out the sun.

“Gay,” Clarke nudges Raven with her foot.

“You or me?” Raven sighs heavily and pats Clarke’s calf.

“You’re lying in your front yard because your neighbors are pretty.” Clarke wiggles her toes under Raven’s side. “I think this time it’s you.”

“Says the one who had their great gay awakening by very publicly and _loudly_ proclaiming you wished you could lose your virginity again because you wanted Lexa Woods to be the only person’s touch you had ever known.” Raven snorts at the memory. Clarke had been very drunk at that particular party. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Lexa had overheard that particular speech on her way out of the dorm.

Raven breathes out and sits up, leaning back on their hands to look up at their friend.

“I am never living that down am I?” Clarke shakes her head.

Lexa leans over and kisses Clarke on the cheek, “I don’t think she was quite that eloquent. I seem to remember her yelling, _I want Lexa Woods on top of me… forever and ever, amen_. while crossing herself.”

“Ah yes, the virginity wish came later as Clarke was throwing up. Quality party you missed out on, Lex.” Raven reaches up a hand and lets Lexa help them to their feet. They steadies themselves on Clarke’s shoulder. “Who all is coming?”

“You, later, hopefully,” Clarke juts her chin toward the neighbors in question half hidden by the Mustang.

Lexa smacks Clarke’s arm, “Octavia, Lincoln, Bellamy, maybe Bell’s new girl but she might not get off work early.”

“Did you invite the newbies yet or did you actually spend the last twenty minutes laying in your front yard?” Clarke grins.

Raven rolls their eyes and turns to head toward the house.

Clarke gasps behind them and Raven turns to see her with one hand pressed to her chest in mock shock and indignation. “I never. The formidable Raven Reyes is off their game.”

Raven takes a step toward Clarke. “Never,” they shakes their head, and poke Clarke in the ribs. Clarke squeaks and giggles in response. “If you remember I once talked you out of your pants. My game is epic.”

“It really isn’t that hard,” Lexa deadpans, though her attention is at the two women flirting over the Mustang.

Raven and Clarke follow her line of sight and look back to Lexa when all they see is two women flirting. Attractive, incredibly so, and quite the sight together, but nothing that would typically send Lexa to this level of distraction.

“Lex?” Clarke asks.

Lexa takes several confident strides across Raven’s lawn and then falters as she calls out, “Anya?!”

The blonde nearly smacks her head on the hood of the car as she straightens up. Lexa pauses waiting for confirmation. Clarke and Raven slowly catch up to Lexa. The dark haired girl takes a step closer to the blonde.

“Lexa Woods? What the hell are you doing back here?” A grin breaks out on the blonde’s face and she crosses the small yard that sits between the two driveways quickly. Lexa meets her somewhere in the middle. There’s an awkward pause of too many years having passed but they end up in a bone crushing hug anyway.

When Anya pulls back from the hug she punches Lexa in the shoulder playfully and Lexa returns the gesture. “What are you doing here, Anya?”

“I live here,” Anya gestures behind her.

“I see you kept the Fastback,” there’s a quaver in Lexa’s voice.

“Had to keep something of his,” Anya shrugs. “Still trying to get it to run.”

Lexa gives her a small smile and nods. She reaches out for Clarke who is there almost before she starts to reach for her. “This is Clarke Griffin, my girlfriend.”

Raven half hides behind Clarke, the normal bravado and confidence they feel is muddled even moreso now by the proximity and Lexa’s history with their new neighbor. They half expect Anya to reach for the lady in the sundress and say much the same. Instead Anya extends her hand to exchange pleasantries.

Lexa reaches behind Clarke to nudge Raven’s shoulder. “And this one is Raven Reyes, your new neighbor. They’re wicked good with cars if you ever decide to let someone else touch the beauty.”

Anya pauses and glances at Raven. Clarke goes still, holding her breath, and Lexa sets her hand back on Raven’s shoulder. Raven knows they’re both waiting to see if Anya or Luna will say anything about their identity.

Anya lets out a rough bark of a laugh and shakes her head, “I’ll figure out how to get Gustus’ baby running again, just you wait.”

Raven breaks out into a grin that they hope reads as genuine and holds out their hand, “You and Lexa must go way back, we’ve known her since college.”

Anya dips her head and raises an eyebrow, “That’s about the last time we really talked.”

Raven lets the moment hang and turns their attention to the one radiant smile and extends their hand. The brunette in the sundress and Doc Marten’s wraps her fingers around Raven’s hand. A smirk pulls at the corner of her mouth and she brushes her thumb across the back of it.

“Luna,” she says with a soft purr. “I live across the street.”

Raven swallows thickly, “Raven.”

Anya rolls her eyes and extends her hand. Raven squeezes Luna’s hand and lets go before quickly reaching out to Anya. Her grip is completely different, firm to the point that Raven squeezes back until they’re certain the two of them are in a competition to see who will give in first. Raven finds themselves grinning when Anya finally lets go.

Clarke coughs and Raven knows she’s covering a laugh. “So we’re having a barbeque to christen Raven’s new place, a few of our friends are stopping by, would you like to join. Maybe regale us with stories about Lexa in her pre-college years?”

Anya’s laugh is full and throaty and Raven finds themselves hoping for the first time that both their new neighbors say yes.

“I think I may have a few choice memories of Lexa before she grew into this calm and collected lady she seems to have become,” Anya winks at Clarke and Raven.

Clarke snorts.

Raven melts.

“I’m going to need a drink…” Lexa turns and starts to lead the group toward Raven’s duplex.

Luna takes a skip and catches up to walk next to Raven, “I’m in. Though, you just moved in, yeah?”

Raven nods and hums a response.

“Do you actually have anything in for a barbeque, or drinking?” Luna raises an eyebrow.

They’re all in through the front door, picking their way around boxes back to the kitchen and the backyard.

“Food is covered,” Clarke explains. “I’ve got Octavia on that, she’ll be here with the boys in a few. Raven should have some hard liquor somewhere, we might want mixers though.”

“If memory serves, little Lexa doesn’t need any,” Anya teases. “Someone used to drink all the boys in her class under the table.”

“Oh god,” Lexa mutters. “Good thing they’ve got an excellent stash…” she mutters to herself as she starts to poke around boxes. “Somewhere,”

Luna nods and then a smile spreads across her lips as she gently collides with Raven, leaning her arm against Raven’s shoulder. “So, do you happen to remember where you hid this excellent stash?”

Raven turns to Luna and breathes in through their nose. Luna is warm and soft against them and smells like sea salt air and morning dew. Raven’s only thought is that she’s definitely not wearing a bra, of that she’s certain. So check one off for queer intuition. “There’s a box somewhere…” Raven gestures around their kitchen.

“Right then,” Anya declares. “I don’t suppose you mind if we help you unpack?” Her biceps flex as she picks up a box and Raven finds themselves nodding, appreciating the fact that Anya is wearing a tank top, momentarily forgetting the quest for alcohol.

“By all means,” they squeak out. “Who am I to say no to such a beautiful contingent of willing bodies.”

That earns them a laugh and a smile from all four women standing in her kitchen. Raven warms to the idea of settling in here, feeling like they belong again, that life is coming together instead of falling apart.


	29. Anya/Clarke/Raven | prompt: Event Horizon

Darkness clings to the edges of the circle. Beyond the reach of the firelight lays sand and beach grass and the ocean. Fifteen minutes of hiking over hills to the south lays town. It’s as if there’s nothing for miles, even though if you hit up the highway and drive north it doesn’t take but ten minutes to get to the next town over.

Right then though, in that moment the entire world has shrunk down to a small piece of the circle, no more than three feet across, just enough for three people to sit side by side, not quite touching, but nearly.

Clarke bounces up from her spot between Anya and Raven. Her fingertips brush Raven’s hair behind their ear, and curl under the lobe as she brushes by. With her other hand she gently lifts Anya’s chin and brushes her thumb across it. Both of them watch her walk out into the darkness to find a dune and some grass to piss behind.

They both watch her go, soft fuzzy expressions filled with awe and wonder at how a girl like Clarke wandered into their town. It’s as unlikely as it is wonderful. It’s a perfect bubble just waiting to burst and Clarke to leave taking with her the good weather and the ease that Raven and Anya have found.

Raven shifts how their leaning, wishing they weren’t so stubborn and they’d bother with a small little chair to sit in so their back didn’t ache. It’s one of the reasons they stopped coming to the bonfires. They stretch out their fingers in the sand, fingertips just pressing against something solid and warm in the cold. Raven tips their head back and looks up at the sky not thinking much of it.

The rest of the group is loud and laughing and it kills them how much they’ve missed this. The fire and their friends. The beers and the laughter. Stumbling home across the dunes and back into town. Sometimes just across The Cove to Luna’s because it’s the only house they can get to that doesn’t involve risking tripping in a gravel lot or on hard concrete when they’re all too drunk to stand up straight.

Raven jolts as she feels the warm press of fingers on top of hers. It’s just a couple of knuckles overlapping. Long fingers, warm despite the cooling sand and the colder night air. They blink to refocus as they shift their gaze to Anya.

With Clarke around things have been almost right again between them. Back is the soft ease and the banter. Raven would say the attraction but that never left.

Anya tilts her head, her eyes flicking down to her hand and Raven’s then back up to Raven’s gaze. She breathes in and hopes Raven gets the message. It’s been forever since they touched when it used to be a daily occurrence. Morning coffee and flirting and climbing the lifeguard tower, every day that’s what Anya did, and every morning Raven was there. 

They had almost been something once, before the freak storm, before Tris died, before Raven quit surfing. After, everything fell apart. Anya melts as a smile curls at the corner of Raven’s mouth. She could lean over and kiss her before Clarke comes back, but their friends are there, and Clarke is coming back and that makes everything complicated.

Raven curls her fingers around Anya’s and Anya tears her gaze away even as she squeezes back.

That’s how Clarke finds them several minutes later, both looking in opposite directions, hands half buried in the sand on the edge of the firelight.

Clarke smiles to herself and picks up three beers from the cooler as she crosses back around the bonfire to where she had been sitting before she’d been so rudely interrupted by a full bladder and a need to sort out what she wanted in her head. The answer was clear and simple and highly complicated, though it seemed at least that everyone was on the same complicated page.

Kneeling down Clarke opens and passes a beer to Raven and to Anya, making a point to glance down at their hands. She touches Anya’s shoulder as she sees Anya start to pull back and shakes her head slightly.

“I leave you two alone for three minutes.” Clarke winks as she settles back in between the two of them, leaning into Raven and pinching at Anya’s leg to pull her closer.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Anya replies flatly even as she scoots closer to Clarke and interlaces her fingers with Raven’s. 

Clarke sips at her beer and lets her back press against their arms, “Is that so?”

She downs half the beer. This is it, that moment that they’ve been tumbling toward for the past several weeks. At first it was a slow slide over the edge of strangers to friends, gathering momentum as they slipped over the horizon and into the unknown. When she got up there had still been a moment where they could all turn back. Where it wouldn’t matter so much if Clarke bounced out of town as had been her plan. It wouldn’t matter so much if things were casual, but something had sucked them past the point of no return.

The thought of leaving, even though her legs are itchy and this place has become achingly familiar, cracks at her heart and Clarke doesn’t know if she could find the strength to leave. Sitting here between Raven and Anya, gently touching though nothing yet has happened, Clarke knows that everything has changed from the moment she sat back down.

The fire roars in front of them, their friends rackus still, and for the most part, oblivious, behind her Clarke can hear the ocean crashing against the shore.

“I think Anya’s right, we have no idea what you’re talking about.” Raven dips her chin and nearly whispers the words against Clarke’s cheek.

Clarke lets her head fall back and lets out a full throaty laugh. It’s impossible, the situation they’re in, but that doesn’t mean she’s not going to enjoy every moment of it.


	30. Clarke/Niylah/Octavia | prompt: A failed star is still a star

“Octavia?” Clarke calls out softly as she tries to flick the light on in her room to no avail.

The electricity in the bunker is spotty but Raven makes sure that Clarke’s room was one of the one’s that back up generator serviced. If only because the sitting area served as one of the main meeting spaces for most of the council’s meetings. That was the excuse she gave anyway, truth was she didn’t want to give up movie nights.

In short, the electricity should be working, always, unless they were truly fucked, but then the outer doors would have opened and they would be dead by now since the radiation is still unbelievably strong. Only six years or so left to go until they can leave.

“O?” Clarke whispers.

She hears a sniffle and a shuffle on the concrete of the floor somewhere in the middle of the room.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s too much, Clarke.” Octavia’s voice is rough and snotty as if she’s been crying. “I can’t stay in the bunker.”

Clarke steps into the pitch black room and shuts the door, knowing whatever happens next isn’t for anyone passing by to hear. “Outside is-”

“-death, I  _ know _ .”

Clarke reaches out in front of her until she bumps into the back of the couch then slowly makes her way to the floor, feeling as she goes. The darkness is pressing and almost painful. Even with her eyes wide open she can’t see anything at all, even the hand she places there to test.

“How did you turn off the power?” Clarke asks as her hand bumps into Octavia’s bare shin. She sits with a huff, her back against the couch.

Things had been slowly building between them since the escape into the bunker. Between injuries and dead loved ones there had been a bond that had grown between them.

“It feels like I’m under the floor again.”

“You aren’t a prisoner, O, we’re no more trapped than we were on the Ark.” Clarke says calmly. They’ve had this argument before and Clarke was hoping for a quiet night. 

“I wanted to see the stars again.” Octavia’s hand wraps around Clarke’s and Clarke lets out a breath before letting herself be pulled down to the floor.

“How do you propose we do that?” Clarke asks as she hooks one leg over Octavia’s hip gingerly.

“Luna said she had an idea, that she and Niylah were going to make something, and talk to Raven about it.”   
Clarke feels Octavia shrug.

“I came back, being around the others was too much, the power was off.”

They lay there, holding onto each other and waiting for an answer. It’s not as if they have somewhere to be.There isn’t far to go beyond these walls, the bunker no larger than a single station on the Ark. Too many trapped outside, and those that had died before. Clarke presses her face to Octavia’s shoulder and in the dark, because of the dark, lets the tears fall. The pain of Lexa’s loss still breathes into her, fills her lungs with painful air, and leaves her broken and failed in the morning. The light in the sky is gone, blotted out. 

The door creaks open and dim light from the hallway spills in, blinding and painful. 

“Shut the door, Niylah.” Octavia grumbles.

The door shuts with a swish and a metal clank and they’re doused in darkness once more. Niylah moves almost silently to where the other two lay and kneels down next to them.

“Close your eyes,” it’s half command half chastisement.

“Does it matter?” Clarke asks.

“Yes, it does,” Niylah says, there’s no room for questioning in her voice and Clarke closes her eyes though she can’t tell the difference. 

A metallic scrape cuts through the silence followed by a whoosh and a flicker. Something catches flame and there’s another scrape of metal. 

Niylah lays down on the floor, on the other side of Octavia, mirroring Clarke who nuzzles into Niylah’s hand when she feels it rest on her cheek. 

“Open your eyes.”

Above them are pinpricks of light, tiny constellations flickering and dancing in the darkness. Clarke looks over to the table where a metal bowl is upturned over a candle.

“Not quite as good as the real thing, but more than we had.” Niylah leans in, pressing her face to the side of Octavia’s. “I’m sorry it isn’t more.”

Octavia lays between Clarke and Niylah like she does on both nights since she found herself afraid and unable to sleep in her own bunk, in the cramped quarters that had been no larger than her hole in the floor on the ark. She’d come to them in hysterics in the middle of the night. Niylah who had been so soft and kind and helped her heal and Clarke who had been there with rage and pain and a gentleness.

She stares up at the stars on the ceiling and squints her eyes trying to make pretend that she’s laying out on a rock staring up at the night sky, that in the distance the sun will rise in a few hours. She’s fallen so far from her place under the floor of the Ark and every step feels like failure.

“I miss him,” she whispers.

No one asks who, they all mourn Lincoln. 

Clarke kisses her cheek.

Niylah curls in tighter, reaching her arm across so that she has ahold of Octavia and Clarke. It was never supposed to be this. She was supposed to leave, go back to her people, but Clarke had asked her to stay so that she would be safe, and then the doors closed, and only a handful of familiar faces roamed the halls. Only a few voices rang in  _ trigedasleng _ . For the first time she feels like an outsider. No one from her past survives and that she did is a broken moment of rejoicing because what kind of life is this trapped under the earth?

Clarke’s hand wraps around her bicep and she can almost make out the soft sad smile in the dark.

Broken, barely shining, tears glistening in the starlight, maybe one day they’ll heal the failures of their past.


	31. Clarke/Luna/Raven | prompt: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor

The fire crackles to life as Luna sits back on her heels and dips her head back to look at the sky. Stars blaze through the darkness, brighter for the lack of the moon. The Milky Way cuts a path across the sky and Luna picks out the constellations easily. 

They’ve been on the road with an envoy of grounders and skaikru alike since Polis had fallen into relative peace after Lexa’s death and the Azgeda were driven out. It had taken nearly a year. She glances over at Clarke and Raven still puttering with their belongings and preparing food to set by the fire. A month into their trip and Luna was ready to be home.

Luna breaths in and looks back to the sky for answers. A mama bear and baby lumber across the sky, sometimes ladles, depends upon who you ask what shapes the stars make. Bear or ladle, Luna follows the lines to the bright star, Polaris, the one that leads them home. Polis. It isn’t far now.

Clarke collapses in the dirt next to Luna with a groan, “Exactly how lost are we? I swear we spent today walking in circles every since we broke off from the caravan.”

Raven stretches and digs the heel of their hand into their thigh, “All the trees look the same.”

Luna smiles to herself and leans over, briefly brushing her cheek against Clarke’s shoulder. She finishes the motion by kissing her cheek. They’ve only just broken off from the main group to avoid taking the long way through the hills with the wagons. All of them were impatient for Polis and privacy once more.

Months of gentle comfort, long talks late at night when the nightmares kept them awake, they had slowly bonded over broken hearts and a mutual love of gentle beautiful things. Still, before the trip had called them away they had only managed one tear filled evening of tension breaking conversation when Raven had screamed out that they were in love with both of them.

“Do you have any idea how much further Polis is?” Raven’s voice sounds weary and rough and there’s an edge of pain in it as they try to work out the knots in their leg.

Luna drops back and lays out in the grass to look up at the sky. She holds up her hand with her thumb out shifting it slightly as she squints through one eye. “Maybe another day,” she pauses, rolling her head to look at Raven. She’s worried that the trip has taken a toll on Raven’s body but she doesn’t want to say it out loud. “Two if we take it easy. We’ll make it there long before the others.”

“I just want to be back to Polis and clean, and bed.” Raven mutters.

“You only want a bed so we can...”

There had been an unspoken agreement that they were waiting to be alone again before they took that next steps barely having had a moment in a private corner to kiss, but now that they were alone it seemed any excuse to keep them from having to face their nerves and fears. 

They can’t take their words back, and every conversation they’ve had that day pushes them closer toward that cliff. Luna had nearly grabbed them both at various points during the day, a passing tree looking like a perfect spot for a first kiss. No one had made a move despite hours of insinuation.

A few days alone in the woods had sounded like bliss when they had made the decision.

Raven snorts, “No, that’s why I want a bath.”

“There’s a stream about two minutes that way,” Luna points above her head and away from the fire. “It won’t be warm, but you’ll be clean.”

“They’re not the only one in need of a bath,” Clarke grumbles. “And if we’re only a day away from Polis I’m waiting for a warm one.”

Raven lurches to her feet their leg half giving out before they’re fully standing. They’ve half a mind to take a bath, but also aren’t certain they’d make it. Stumbling, they nearly go headfirst into the small fire before tossing their weight in the other direction only to stumble into Luna’s arms. A string of curses whooshes out with their breath and they move to push away from Luna. They can’t let their body give out yet, not this close to rest and a proper bed, not when they’re still expecting Luna and Clarke to leave her behind. It would be easier with two instead of the complicated trio they’ve backed themselves into.

Luna shifts her grip from Raven’s arms to their waist as she lets her head swim and settle. They hiked too far and it had been too long since breakfast but she’s ready to pull Raven and Clarke back down into the grass near the fire. She brushes her hand across Raven’s cheek and cups their face. “Take a deep breath for me.”

She wants to lean in and steal her breath away but she can feel the frustration simmering under Raven’s skin.

“I’m fine,” Raven snaps, pushing at Luna’s shoulders without much conviction. They step away and hiss in pain. They want to give into the comfort but giving into the comfort means making more than blase remarks about sex. It means crossing the line that they’re all towing.

Luna tugs them back. She presses a finger to Raven’s lips. “Just because you can push through on your own doesn’t mean you can’t lean on us. We talked about this.”

Raven dips their head and leans into Luna but doesn’t embrace her. Luna has been the one holding them together as much as Clarke and Raven doesn’t want to fight. 

Clarke reaches out, her hand wrapping around Raven’s calf. “We’re almost… home,” her mouth wraps around the word because it isn’t quite right, but anywhere with Raven and Luna feels like more than she deserves most days. After Lexa’s death she felt more adrift than ever and they grounded her, kept her tethered so she could work towards Lexa’s goal of peace.

“Do we have to go back? Can’t we just stay lost out here?” Raven whispers.

“That would imply that we’re lost in the first place.” Luna says with a small laugh.

“We aren’t?” Raven lifts their head and looks Luna in the eye a small frown on her lips.

“Come here,” Luna sits down, sliding in next to Clarke in the grass and reaches up her arms to Raven to pull them down. “We’re all tired and we should rest.”

“Luna…” Raven glances from Luna to Clarke and back. This is a tipping point. If they go to the ground this means that everything they’re saying is real. Clarke catches their eye and that sly smile that caught them off guard the day they landed on the ground makes their breath catch in their throat.

Luna tugs on Raven’s hands and waits for them to settle to the ground.

It takes a few moments but the three of them lie back, partially tangled together but looking out in the same direction. Raven is curled in the middle, a familiar press of a warm body on either side of them.

“What are we doing?” Raven asks. They feel Luna’s body shake with a slight silent laughter.

“Looking at the stars so I can show you where we are.”

Clarke curls into Raven’s side, her head resting on Raven’s shoulder and her arm slung across Raven’s torso, hand resting on Luna. “Taking advantage that there is no one around to stop us from laying like this.” She turns her head and presses it to Raven’s shoulder, suppressing the ache to tilt her head and kiss their neck.

“See that bright star there,” Luna lifts her hand above them and points down the line of stars, fingertips gliding along the back of the bears. “We follow the hunt to find Polaris, from there we follow it to Polis.” Luna shifts to her side and hooks her leg over one of Raven’s as she turns. “We keep that cluster of stars over there at our back if we want to find the sea, but only for another couple of months, then the stars shift, but if we want somewhere quiet we should follow that star.” Luna gestures and shifts so she’s laying half on her stomach, her nose dangerously close to Raven’s cheek.

Clarke lays her head on Raven’s shoulder and reaches out to Luna, her hand resting on Luna’s side. She just wants this, for it to be right and real.

“Are you nervous?” Clarke asks, her hand coming to rest over Raven’s heart which is fluttering and pounding against their sternum like a panicked bird.

Raven scoffs, “Ha, not likely.”

Luna leans in, her lips brushing against Raven’s ear, “Your body betrays you.”

Raven sucks in a breath of air and they bite back a scathing retort meant to push Clarke and Luna away, back to a safe distance where they don’t have to face their feelings quite so literally. “And so what if I am?” They breathe out.

Clarke’s hand settles low on their belly, soft and warm, her palm pressing down slightly as she leans over to Luna. There’s intent in that gaze, a longing, a desire to end the pretense that they aren’t together.

“We take it slow,” Luna whispers. Her fingers curl around Raven’s shoulder, her thumb brushing across the front of Raven’s neck as she lifts up to meet Clarke in a chaste kiss.

Months of long nights, holding hands, soft touches on backs and stealing hugs in dark corners burns between them.

“Slow?” Raven chokes out, not certain now that the walls are breaking down they can hold back.

Luna pulls back from the kiss with a laugh. Clarke sighs.

“I thought someone wanted a bath first,” Luna tips Raven’s chin toward her and bends down to steal another soft kiss, nothing more than a promise in a press of lips.

Before Raven can respond Clarke tilts their chin and Raven eagerly meets Clarke for a gentle kiss. Lying there between Clarke and Luna, Raven feels a sense of peace that maybe there are things still good and pure left, pieces of humanity worth fighting for. Between skirmishes and political fighting some days it seems an impossible thing to find.

Clarke kisses the spot just below Raven’s eye, a warmth rushing through her as she settles back in. This is real and good. They’re here and alive. There’s a sadness beneath the feeling though, that she’s betraying Lexa’s memory, but she places Luna’s hand on her waist and presses her face into the crook of Raven’s neck and reminds herself that Lexa would want her to find happiness once again.

“Tell us more about the stars, Luna, what other stories do they tell?”

Luna holds them both, and settles in to talk about the heavens and the history written in the sky.


	32. Anya/Luna/Raven | neighbors!au pt 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: supernova remnant

The fight burns under Raven’s skin, all the words they had said to each other crawling and twisting and making everything fit wrong once more. It’s where they had started but worse.

Sometimes Raven wishes they could keep their mouth shut, just for once not lit the fire pour out, but there are too many feelings burning inside them and they can’t. Their heart digs too deep in everything and this is no exception. The love that they feel is real and they hate that it’s there because the three of them are still dancing around what they are to each other despite an admission of feelings.

Raven had snapped at Anya, scathing and biting, when Anya had tried to help them find something to dress in so they could go out that afternoon as planned. Anya had snapped back, remorse flickering of her features but there was a stubbornness that ran through her that had her leaving before it could manifest. Luna had tried next, earnest and patient but Raven had writhed away from her touch, unable to stay still, unable to calm themselves. Luna’s patience had left Raven frustrated with themselves and they’d snapped at Luna to leave. That they weren’t going out, that things just weren’t working out.

Luna had said something low and harsh and pained and left.

They’d both left.

Which is what Raven had wanted but also not wanted at all. So it’s their own fault.

They toss themselves back on their bed with a grunt of pain and toss their arm across their face before curling onto their side. The fleece blanket smells like Luna’s soap and Anya’s perfume and it’s almost too much. It is too much but they don’t move, letting the memories the scents bring beat against their heart like ice picks cracking a glacier. 

Raven isn’t certain they can face either of their girlfriends… almost girlfriends. Neighbors. At this point the three of them have probably retreated back to neighbors at least as far as Raven is concerned. They know Luna and Anya won’t be back in their bed. It’s safer with the invisible line between them, the flirting doesn’t have to mean anything and Raven’s bad days don’t ruin the day for all of them.

Today was ants under their skin which sat like a shit stretched and twisted on the bias. It was there, and okay, but not quite right and if only they could just twist it back, tug it into place they wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but they can’t. Each article of clothing that sat on top made their insides crawl. The outside felt like a poor reflection of the inside, too gendered, not gendered enough, nothing like what they needed to see in the mirror, which only made their skin burn and itch.

Kicking at their sweatpants Raven tugs them off and leaves them crumpled where they fall leaving them in a sports bra and boyshorts. A sob escapes their lips and turns over, curling onto their other side, but the pain is back, the chronic ache that settles in their bones and leaves them unable to find comfort. No matter how they lay the pressure builds in an ache that in turns grows sharp and deep.

They dig their fingers into the muscle of their low back but that does little but change the quality of the pain.

What they need is a distraction but it had come too late at the start and they hadn’t wanted Anya and Luna to see then like this. Things had been good since they had moved in, good days and good times. There was a beautiful upswing they had crashed down from.

They’d gone out in a blaze, bright and hot and burning.

Left in its wake was a heavy pain.

They had been like a star, spinning too fast, burning too brightly until they reached that tipping point and imploded, too much heat, too much… just too much.

Raven sobs, thick and raw. It rips at their throat.

Their phone died a few hours ago, left uncharged after a rough night. And even knowing that they shouldn’t be alone like this there’s no one they want to call. The weakness that they feel isn’t something they want witnessed. Even calling Clarke feels like too much, and there’s a guilt there that they rely on Clarke for more than they should.

Tears and pain and heartache are all they feel as they afternoon passes into evening. Somewhere in the middle is the realization that they haven’t eaten since the night before but even that doesn’t get them up from bed. Instead they lay there wondering if they could sleep and wake up with this feeling further away. So deep in their misery they are that Raven nearly misses the sound of their front door opening and two sets of footsteps in the hallway.

A heavy sigh precedes their arrival.

“You messed up today,” Luna’s voice is harsh but even.

“Thanks,” Raven spits. They dig their fingertips into their scalp and curl tighter into a ball. This is worse than Anya and Luna seeing them that morning as they started to fall apart.

“But so did we,” Anya clears her throat. “Look, will you talk to us?”

Raven grunts and sniffles and wishes they had thought to get under the covers earlier so they could just bury themselves under the duvet.

Anya sighs heavily and Raven hears her settle to the floor followed by Luna toeing off her boots and doing the same.

“I know today was rough for you,” Anya starts. “I forgot how hard it can be sometimes… since I’m not living with Aden anymore I don’t see his bad gender days so much....” Anya sighs heavily and Raven almost looks up but stays instead stubbornly curled with her back to them both. “I don’t understand, but I’m sorry I made it worse.”

There’s a niggling feeling in Raven’s stomach that they should unfurl and sit up, but that would be forgiving them, that would be forgiving the lost day and the brokenness of their heart. They dig their fingernails into their sides hard enough that they wonder if they’ll draw blood, but it keeps them from shaking with tears. The sharpness of it distracts from the ache in their sacrum.

“Raven, I’m sorry too,” Luna’s voice is sweet and soft. “And we’re not done. Anya and I don’t want to walk away from this, so we need you to come tell us what you need on days like today.”

Raven wraps their arms around themselves tighter as if the pressure and the pain will somehow keep them together and keep their feelings from slipping out. Another sob escapes and they dig their nails in once more, willing themselves to stop. Their body is wrong and their gender is wrong and they can’t stop that feeling. It feels fake and also overwhelmingly true.

At the same time their heart is bursting open and wanting to run into Luna and Anya’s arms and that terrifies them. But more than anything they hate that the others are seeing them like this, broken, shattered, a star burned out. This isn’t who they want anyone to think they are.

“We’ll be in the living room,” Anya’s voice is quiet.

It takes Raven more time than they can measure, maybe five minutes maybe fifty, it’s hard to tell, but they pull themselves from bed. Their skin still itches but it’s further away now, buried beneath the pain and the exhaustion. Gingerly they bend down to pick up their sweats and pull them on slowly knowing that they shouldn’t go downstairs in only their underwear.

Raven washes their face with cold water and avoids looking in the mirror.

The living room is quiet. Luna has one leg tossed across Anya’s lap and her head on Anya’s shoulder. Their hands are clasped and fingers interlaced. Both look as bone tired as Raven feels.

A gnawing feeling settles in Raven’s stomach that maybe they’re intruding. This isn’t for them.

Luna sits up slightly and reaches out her free hand.

Raven hesitates because the pain from that morning is still there, the resentment and the anger, but both of them had come back, and the exhaustion and the need to belong and be held is overwhelming. They want this to be real.

They want this to be right.

“I-” Raven starts, not sure where to go from there. “I can’t say that I’ll need one thing and it will always be that, but I can try to not push you away.”

Anya’s smile is soft and radiant even as it only twitches at the corner of her mouth, “That’s a start.”

“Come sit with us?” Luna asks. “We want to make today up to you.”

Raven finds their feet moving even before they’ve made up their mind. “I don’t know if I’m up for sex.”

Luna shakes her head and holds out her hand, “Whatever you need, that’s what we’re here for.”

Raven takes Luna’s hand and twists, falling into Anya’s lap and letting her head rest where Luna’s shoulder presses to Anya’s. This is what they need. Anya’s arm wraps around them, fingers gently brushing across the marks they made on their sides. Luna presses a kiss to her forehead and they feel Anya lean their head against the side of theirs.

All the energy from the explosion earlier is still swirling around, but maybe, instead of the end, it’s the start of something beautiful.

“Can we watch a movie and order eggrolls?” Raven asks.

“Just eggrolls?” Anya laughs gently.

“I want prawn crackers too.” Raven says softly.

Luna kisses their cheek. “Whatever you want.”


	33. Anya/Luna/Raven | neighbors!au pt 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: totality
> 
> *note: land sea sky neighbors!au is not in chronological order

Anya had woken up that morning to a text from Raven asking if she wanted waffles and bacon. There had been a moment where she grumbled at the daylight but then a second and third text and rung in. One from Luna saying she’d be over when she was dressed, and another from Raven saying this was a pajama breakfast kind of morning.

Lately things had been building between the three of them, the flirting more intense, the familiarity and comfort more than she’d ever felt with anyone else.

It had taken less than five minutes to roll out of bed, brush her teeth and find herself barefoot and knocking on the sliding glass door that led into Raven’s kitchen. 

Raven pulls open the door with a small sleepy smile on their lips and a mug of coffee in their outstretched hand. Anya's fingers wrap around the mug and she steps into the doorway alongside Raven and leans in to press a kiss to their cheek.  

Her heart betrays her, flipping in her chest and smashing against her rib cage like a fish searching for water. She feels her ears go hot and she dips her gaze as she pulls away from Raven. 

Raven winks at her and Anya sucks in a breath through her nose. It's too early and she has a questionable amount of feelings for one of her best friends. 

“Morning to you too,” Raven's voice is rough with sleep still as they pad back into the kitchen. 

Anya watches them go, eyes flitting over their exposed muscles back only covered by a sports bra and a pair of overly small running shorts. 

“You gave me coffee, it seemed appropriate.” Anya croaks out and sips at her coffee. 

Raven leans against the counter and closes their eyes for a moment. Anya takes a few soft steps into the room debating if she should offer to get Raven’s brace or crutches but Raven opens their eyes and smiles and Anya knows that this is little more than the normal pain that Raven deals with. 

A knock on the front door pulls both their attention. 

“Luna’s tea is there,” Raven points to the unclaimed mug on the edge of the counter. 

“You didn't steep it too long this time?” Anya teases. 

“Better ditch the tea bag,” Raven grins. “Go get our girl.”

Anya's heart leaps at that and she snatches up Luna's mug, tossing the tea bag in the trash and rushing off toward the door. She tells herself it's just the lack of coffee and promise of food. Raven can't cook a lot but waffles are something they excel at. 

Luna smiles gently at Anya and Anya nearly drops her coffee and Luna’s tea. She's wearing a long loose tank top and knee length leggings. 

“How'd I beat you over?” Anya raises an eyebrow and hands over the tea as she steps aside to let Luna pass by. 

“I thought I would dress. Clothes are usually preferred at the breakfast table.” Luna grins and pats Anya's arm as she passes by. Anya nearly chokes on her sip of coffee. 

Make that a questionable amount of feelings for both her best friends. 

“What can we do?” Luna leans against the counter next to Raven and looks for all the world as if she might lean over and kiss her. 

That's not the parameters they've set between them. They're friends, and despite all the flirting, nothing more than that. If something were going to happen it would have happened long ago. 

“I got this,” Raven smiles sweetly and waves Luna toward the couch. 

Anya settles down into one end of the couch and tucks her feet up underneath her. She wraps both hands around the mug of coffee and lets the warmth seep into her bones. Early mornings are not her thing but this she could get used to, not just breakfast when they're all hung over but on other mornings too. 

There's a serenity she hasn't felt in a long time that washes over her. It's a sense of completeness that settles in her heart as she watches Luna and Raven lean into each other and giggle. She takes a sip of coffee and holds it in her mouth. 

It's exactly as she takes it even though she knows Raven doesn't keep milk in her fridge. 

She watches as Luna runs the back of her hand down Raven's arm and swallows. Luna sips at her tea. Green mint. A ridiculously imperceptible splash of brown sugar. Steeped for three minutes. 

That’s when it aligns. Luna leans and gives Raven a half hug while kissing their shoulder and Anya’s heart steadies. It’s them. The three of them. It always was, and maybe, one day it will be in reality. This is what she wants though. All of them on gentle mornings, waffles cooking, bacon crisping, coffee the way she likes it. 

She holds out her hand to Luna as she crosses to the couch and pulls Luna down next to her. One day she’ll figure out how to tell them, but for now… for now she has coffee and soft sleepy cuddles and the promise of breakfast.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Luna takes a sip of her beer and points the bottle at Anya, “I disagree, if Raven had been here we would have ordered twice as many eggrolls, which means you would have gotten one more and there would still be an extra.”

Anya rolls her eyes slightly and takes another sip of her beer as she pulls Luna’s knees more firmly into her lap. Luna bites her lip because this is dangerously close to somewhere they’ve been before, when much less sober. It would take nothing at all to be straddled across Anya’s lap, and the thought is incredibly tempting.

“I think you underestimate Raven’s ability to eat eggrolls.” Anya jokes.

Luna taps her chin with her beer, “Perhaps, maybe we need to revisit our usual order.”

“Maybe we just need to stop trying to divide the order when one of us isn’t here, just assume we’ll feed the other when they get home.” There’s a hopefulness in Anya’s voice that Luna’s been noticing lately, and a softness in her gaze that she only ever thought she was imagining.

Luna takes a large sip of her beer and watches Anya for a moment. There’s an almost shyness in the way her head drops as she notices Luna watching her. There’s a waiver in the brush of her thumb across Luna’s thigh. It’s the unspoken question they don’t ask themselves, could this be more.

The three of them do this, but their flirting has to come with bravado or else they run into this. When they’re soft they run the risk of everything colliding. Luna bites her lip.

She shouldn’t but she covers Anya’s hand with hers. Time slows down, the heavy thud of her heart in her chest as loud as the blood rushing through her ears. They both watch their hands resting on Luna’s thigh, the rest of dinner and their drinks forgotten. She’s set hers down and so as Anya.

Her breathing becomes shallow. They’ve been here before, right on the edge. It’s been a hundred times before Raven… and after Raven too. There’s almost a pleading in Anya’s eyes that Luna can’t say no to. She doesn’t want to say no.

Luna holds her breath and moves Anya’s hand to her waist. When they’re soft they run the risk of everything aligning.

Time starts Again. Anya pulls Luna’s hips forward and she leans over Luna, hovering for just a moment before she leans in and presses a soft kiss to Luna’s lips. It’s been too many years and too many close calls. There’s a sweet sort of release in the gentleness of the kiss. Luna feels herself melt into it, no more than a firm press of lips, a slightly parting, a promise that this could continue.

Anya pulls back for just a moment and Luna feels her heart break because for as wonderful as this is she knows that something is missing. Someone to be exact. The person that they’ve been talking about all evening.

Luna presses her hand to Anya’s chest and she can feel her heart beating there, wild and confused in tandem with Luna’s own. She doesn’t have the words she needs. That she wants this, she wants them, more than she can say but that she also doesn’t want them like this.

She doesn’t want just to be with Anya.

One day, she thought, the three of them would make a decision, who couldn’t live without whom, and two of them would pair off. It’s clear now that the answer is impossible because she’ll never be complete without both Anya and Raven, to have one without the other would throw them all out of their orbits.

Luna’s gaze falls toward the last uneaten eggroll that they were debating splitting, or saving for Raven when they got home from work. It’s not that Luna doesn’t want Anya, it’s that without Raven in the equation there’s too much missing for it to balance out. They’re incomplete.

Anya pulls back and stumbles to her feet, apologies tumbling from her lips. Lips that Luna now knows the weight of, a feeling she will never forget.

“I’m sorry- I -” Anya turns on the spot. There are tears in her eyes.

“Anya.”

She snatches up her jacket and fishes in the pockets to check for her keys. “I didn’t mean…”

“Anya, no.” Luna jumps to her feet but Anya is already at the door.

“I have to… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Anya, don’t go,” Luna nearly yells. The front door to Luna’s place shuts on her last word.

As quickly as it all happened, Anya is out the door and Luna doesn’t know if she should run after her or not. If she runs after her she would have to explain and she’s not certain that the outcome would be anything but more kisses that she isn’t ready for but are so desperately needed.

She watches across the darkness of the street and hopes for Anya to come back of her own accord. Of course Anya is too stubborn for that, but they have a run planned for the morning and she knows Anya will be there then. So when she sees Raven’s car pull into the drive she shoots off a text.

_ We saved you an eggroll _ ,  _ want me to bring it over? _

 

~ ~ ~

 

Raven lays in the middle of the floor of their bedroom in boy shorts and a sports bra. Their skin doesn’t quite itch, but feels nervy, like ants crawling under it with fire on their feet. Teleporting ants. The lines are inconsistent and sometimes accompanied by starburst tingles across their back. They scratch at their leg, again, and again until the desire to scratch off the feeling is overwhelming and their skin burns with it.

It’s as if a shirt is hanging askew and rubbing in just the wrong way. Something soft but firm that when laid on becomes an irritant. If they could take a step outside their body they’d be fine but it doesn’t feel right.

The least of their problems is the constant ache in their leg and back, to just deal with that seems like a kind of dream Or the ache in their stomach that they know is spurned on by the stress and the worry and the anxiety of this feeling that their body isn’t right.

But also that maybe they aren’t enough, that their presentation conforms enough to the gender binary that to claim the title genderqueer is a falsehood. They know that’s a lie, that the years of the word woman digging under their skin and sitting over them like an ill-fitting dress is enough. Woman is not what they are, no matter if they can appreciate the feminine aesthetic on themselves sometimes.

Raven scratches and rolls on the floor twisting and struggling to find some relief from any of it.

They reach for their phone expecting to text Clarke to come over. Clarke is the one that’s kept them calm through the worst of it, helped them find their place and their confidence. When they can’t love themselves Clarke has always shown up in spades in so many ways.

Except, as Raven cradles their phone in their hand and curls onto their side they find themselves opening up the group text with Anya and Luna. It’s something they’ve never asked of them and rarely talked about. It’s only ever been in small bits, Anya talking about Aden and introducing him to Raven while saying that she’s always trying to learn. Luna checking in on Raven with the utmost discretion. 

For once it isn’t Clarke’s comfort that they want but Anya and Luna’s.

It all aligns then and the totality of their need hits them. This isn’t a soft flirtation, no more than friends who care deeply but will never be more. This is… this is different. There won’t be any trysts on drunken nights the three of them don’t talk about or keep secret from the other. 

There’s a finality in the completeness of the feeling welling up inside Raven.

They need them both.

Their heart yearns for the strength of Luna’s arms and the slow steady beat of Anya’s heart against their ear. They want to make coffee and tea in the mornings and keep real milk in the fridge even though it makes them sick. They want cold eggrolls after a long night of work and conversations until sunrise. They want to wake to legs and arms tangled and a heavy sort of wonder in their chest.

The stars could align and this feeling could not be any more complete than it is.

Raven lays there, twisted up on their floor and knows that despite the truth of what they feel it may just be another sensation to endure. Twisted skin, and fire ants, and a heart that’s full when their best friends are on their bed. The fear that it will never be more than that, an ill-fitting feeling in an ill-fitting body rolls over them.

They close out of the group chat and text Clarke. The warm totality of the feeling has passed, there for a fleeting moment and gone once more.


	34. Princess Mechanic | prompt: leaning on a shoulder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> takes place in some alternate s5 where things don't suck quite so much. note i haven't even seen s4 and only know vaguely what canon is because tumblr

The world is quiet.

Quieter than it ever was before the burn. Before the war and the dead and their lost friends. Before the bunker. Before space round two.

The night sky is clear, a vast swath of blue black splattered with starlight. Space dust glows in rainbow colors. So quiet is the world around Raven that she feels as if she can hear the twinkling of the stars and the calm of the space dust falling from the sky.

Even the whir of the machines that they had used has died - corruption from the radiation eating through the delicate and ancient wiring while the burn crawled across the continents.

She leans back and stretches out her shoulders before easing herself into the grass. The weight of her body sinks into the earth. Earth again once more. The weight of what they’ve done on the ground is as heavy as the gravity. With the weight comes pressure and pain once more. For the years in space it had been less, she’d been, in some ways… better, but not entirely.

Part of her has been missing.

Footsteps break the silence.

The camp is half a mile off, away from the cliff edge but still projected by the sheer edge of the outcropping of rock. There aren’t many of them now at the end of things so there are only a few people left that might be searching her out. Even fewer still that she knows would at this time of night.

“Hey Clarke,” she says softly without looking.

“How did you know it was me?” Clarke nudges Raven with her foot and sits down.

Raven props herself up on her elbows. Words die on the back of her throat because she doesn’t know if Clarke felt the same. Had Clarke spent the past six years wishing she could hear Raven’s uneven steps in the  woods like Raven had spent the past six years wishing the footsteps in the hall had been Clarke’s or that the warmth beside her in bed had been the culmination of the long lost almost.

Their reunion had been the one thing that kept Raven going, hoping. That even as they heard reports of death and destruction, and lost hope that they could make it safely back down to the ground, Raven had dreamed of Clarke’s face. She’d dreamed of those blue eyes, piercing, and seeing, calculating and the intelligence there in her every move, the steadiness of the words she chooses.

Clarke reaches out and squeezes Raven’s thigh before retreating back to herself.

“I always know it’s you,” Raven whispers.

Blue eyes in the dark are grey but Raven knows that color, she knows that arch of Clarke’s brow and the way it settles in the purse of her lips.

“Six years is a long time.”

“We’re still us though.”

Clarke lays back in the grass next to Raven, “Are we?”

Raven twists, despite the protest in her spine and looks down at Clarke, eyes wide and curious.

It’s been two weeks since Raven and the others landed back down on the ground. It’s six months since the bunker opened back up. It’s been ten days since Clarke sought them all out, a child in tow.

Clarke who they had believed dead. Clarke who never should have been able to survive the radiation but because she risked her life to try to save them all - maybe underneath it all just see Lexa one last time. Clarke, impossible Clarke. She walked into camp and the world fell silent.

There weren’t many of them left. What felt like no more than a handful, but thirty of them, skaikru and grounders didn’t matter much anymore who was who, those that left, they huddled close, knowing this was the end, but clinging to life.

The Clarke, alive and bright eyed, walked in. Raven had ignored the pain and hobbled to her. The same as Clarke’s previous returns, a bone crushing hug, smiles, feeling like home. The only place that ever felt like home.

Are they the same people? Are they still them?

Raven lowers herself back into the grass next to Clarke and leans her head on Clarke’s shoulder. She holds her breath, a prayer in the close of her eyes. Clarke tilts her head and leans it against Raven’s. She shifts, the length of her arm pressing against Clarke’s all the way down until her index finger loops around Clarke’s pinky.

Clarke flexes her pinky.

Still them.

Years and death could tear them apart and they would still be.

Raven opens her eyes and looks up at the stars. For so many years they had lived up there but this feels right, looking up at the sky, solid ground beneath them, real and growing. There’s life around them. Clarke is back and the hope that Raven clung so desperately to was worth it.

Clarke shuffles down and curls into Raven’s side.

Maybe what they mean by them is changing.

Clarke’s nose presses to Raven’s cheek, her head against Raven’s shoulder now.

Maybe it was always this since the beginning; there had just been too much pain between them. Their hearts belonged to others but always still. Had always…

Raven’s stares at the stars so hard her eyes start to water. They would never be without the holes where the loves had rested.   
Clarke twines her fingers with Raven’s.

Her voice is barely there, a breath on the wind, but it burrows deep in Raven’s soul, “I watched the sky every night for a sign that you had come back to Earth. When the radiation faded and the world began to heal I barely slept. Maddie started to keep watch during the day while I dozed, but at night. At night I looked up at where we had come from and watched for you to pass over head. Waited…” Clarke draws in a shuddering breath. “Afraid that there would be a crash. I watched. The others fixed a radio, but when I heard them on my channel I stayed silent. How could I come back. Lexa gone. You gone. Octavia sounded so shattered and angry even as she pleaded for me to be alive, to come home. It wasn’t home.”

Raven turns her head, too close to see Clarke clearly. Wonder passes over her. “When we landed…”

“I saw it. Too bright to be a falling star, too purposeful… to close to be anything else.”

“Oh,” Raven swallows thickly. Her hip protests the angle and the pressure but there’s nothing quite so sweet as her nose against Clarke’s, their breath mingling, warm and vibrant and full of possibility.

They were still them, after everything, they would always be them.

Clarke reaches up and cups Raven’s cheek with her hand.

This is what that looks like now.

Raven presses her forehead to Clarke’s.

“Yeah, Clarke, we’re still us.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @ [dreamsheartstory](http://dreamsheartstory.tumblr.com)


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